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Academic and policy debates pertaining to the respective roles of the European Union (EU) and NATO in global security governance recurrently refer to the notion of the European pillar within NATO. Yet the meaning and scope of a European pillar in NATO have remained largely undefined. Whether the European pillar refers to European states being more active within the Atlantic Alliance or to the EU playing an increased role in the defence domain, in complementarity with NATO, is still unclear.
This article aims to explore some of these questions. It starts with a genealogy of the term ‘European pillar in NATO’ before offering a conceptualisation of the term. It then aims to unpack what the pillar can possibly look like in practice, both from a political and from an operational perspective.
