| Abstract [eng] |
As military conflicts and terrorism has become an increasingly frequent event, ensuring security is one of the essential priorities of the European Union (EU). Therefore, a security mechanism is necessary to ensure that threats are being monitored and managed. The EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) provides such a mechanism. The CSDP covers areas of civil missions and military operations of the EU and is currently one of the CSDP most important and rapidly developing policies of the EU – the strategic purpose and the operational capabilities were shaped in less than a decade and will continue to develop in accordance with the Treaty of Lisbon and the changing security situation of the EU. The rapidly changing geopolitical environment in the field of security inside the EU’s Member States and beyond the borders of the Union in the twenty-first century is affecting and shaping the development of the CSDP. However, uncertainty still exists: How will the EU’s CSDP develop further? What benefits or losses may the CSDP integration bring to the EU? Will it be able to ensure peace and prosperity in the region and improve overall global stability? The attempts to provide possible future developments in the global geopolitical arena may determine the success or failure of the EU’s CSDP. A lot of discussions and debates are rising about the deeper integration of the CSDP but very little specific content is provided about the shape and direction of the integration. This thesis aims to identify the main historic aspects of the evolution and the current trends of the EU’s CSDP development, examine the EU’s CSDP institutional structure and legislation in order to foresight the future possibilities of development of the EU’s CSDP. The increasing amount of debates regarding the future of the CSDP, the cooperation and integration processes in the EU are the main drivers, which are shaping the policy’s development further. However, there is very little relevant academic and analytical studies performed in the field of the EU security policy formation after the treaty of Lisbon. The thesis results offer foresight into the possible futures of the CSDP development, highlighting the importance of the futurology studies in the field of pre-policy making and provide the ground for future scientific discussions and debates. Specifically, the scenario development method offers the possibility to model scenarios of the future development of the CSDP. The modelled scenarios can provide valuable foresight for the multiple development possibilities of the CSDP, allow to shape the CSDP in the required direction and allow to prepare for the foresighted events in advance. Preparing for multiple developments of the CSDP in the future is part of political strategic management and could lead to preferred results in the future. Foresighting can serve as a valuable instrument to analytical and policy making research in numerous fields of political science: starting with the analysis of behavior of domestic political actors, analysis of security and foreign policy, as well as international relations processes. Scenarios have long become a fundamental instrument of foresighting as they offer multiple possible developments of events compressed into several alternative visions, allowing to recognize the impact of the fundamental factors more clearly. Therefore, the scenario method is the most commonly used method in the research of international phenomena and processes of foreign policy strategizing. |
