Jean Monnet Module

EURopean securitY and Defense: Industry, Capacity, and Evolution (EURYDICE)

Project Summary

In November 2025, Prof. Schilde was awarded a Jean Monnet Module: EURopean securitY and Defense: Industry, Capacity, and Evolution (EURYDICE). The module advances European integration studies by developing new theoretical and practical frameworks for understanding the EU’s evolving role as a security actor. It builds directly on the successful 2021-2024 Jean Monnet Chair in European Security at Boston University by focusing on the ways in which the EU functions as a 21st century security state through its regulatory and infrastructural authority and networks rather than traditional military means.The project supports EU policy-making by demonstrating how the EU’s market, legal, regulatory, and judicial mechanisms can leverage defense industrial supply chains and enhance strategic autonomy.

The Module consists of three integrated activities: teaching a specialized course on “The EU as a 21st Century Security Actor/State,” conducting research for a book manuscript examining the EU’s security capabilities, and organizing an annual outreach workshop series on EU Defense Capabilities and Strategic Autonomy. Through these activities, the Module will reach students across disciplines, generate policy-relevant knowledge about contemporary security governance, and create dialogue between academic research and policy practitioners. The project particularly emphasizes how the EU’s regulatory and infrastructural powers make it function more like other contemporary security states than previously understood, and via this lens, identifying which specific regulatory and market functions the EU lacks in order to create a robust defense industrial base as the foundation for future European strategic autonomy. For EU studies and beyond the academic output will connect EU integration literature to a political science state formation literature in order to generate practical insights for understanding the EU’s evolving role in international security.

Background

The Jean Monnet Module: EURopean securitY and Defense: Industry, Capacity, and Evolution (EURYDICE) advances European integration studies by developing new theoretical and practical frameworks for understanding the EU’s evolving role as a security actor, and disseminates those frameworks to interdisciplinary students and scholars within university networks inside and primarily outside of the EU. It also generates policy-relevant knowledge to strengthen the EU’s global position by analyzing how the EU can effectively harness its existing regulatory and infrastructural powers toward strategic autonomy. Building directly on the successful 2021-2024 Jean Monnet Chair in European Security at Boston University, the Module provides practical frameworks for achieving EU strategic autonomy goals through a novel understanding of the EU as a 21st century security actor, by evaluating it in comparison to other contemporary nation states trying to generate security goods. The project directly supports EU policy-making and strategic goals by demonstrating how the EU’s market, legal, regulatory, and judicial mechanisms can (further) leverage defense industrial supply chains and enhance strategic autonomy. Prof. Schilde’s EU security state project proposes that the EU’s regulatory and infrastructural power makes it more similar than different from traditional nation states, and demonstrates the conditions under which the EU has the market, legal, regulatory, industrial policy, and judicial mechanisms towards harnessing defense industry supply chains towards strategic autonomy, and where the EU is still lacking the mechanisms towards achieving this at scale. This analysis provides concrete pathways for strengthening the EU’s strategic goal of a stronger Europe in the world: a coherent defense industrial base within Europe, shaped and incentivized by EU market authority, as a foundation of European security strategy.

EURYDICE’s research agenda directly strengthens EU policymaking by demonstrating how the EU’s regulatory and infrastructural power aligns with other nation state strategic challenges and resources, providing an opportunity to clarify what functions the EU already has towards strategic autonomy, and which functions the EU still lacks. Various mechanisms of existing EU security competencies include its monetary authority, judicial authority, regulatory power and infrastructural capacity. Like other modern nation states, the EU harnesses market and regulatory power rather than direct taxation or standing armies to generate security capacity (in this case, for its member states). This idea is deeply provocative, and stands apart from traditional EU studies, security studies, and policy discourse, but is compelling and powerful upon further examination. For example, the US has not funded a war through direct taxation since the Korean War, and US wars are fought with more private than military personnel. Most contemporary states do not generate defense capacity on their own, but rely on their domestic and international private supply chains for procurement, which is a market and regulatory function, not a military function. This comparative framework both advances theoretical understanding of European integration and provides practical insights for EU policymaking as the EU attempts to increase its strategic autonomy in the face of great power tension and changes in the international order. The Module thus generates both scholarly and policy-relevant knowledge about how states generate strategic autonomy in the 21st Century through regulation, taxation, industrial policy, and harnessing market power towards supply chain management. Understanding the EU as a security state provides practical frameworks for achieving strategic autonomy – the EU can leverage its existing infrastructural, market, and regulatory authority to build defense industrial capacity and strategic capabilities.

The EU faces security challenges in the face of rapid changes to the international order, but there is no clear and shared understanding of what resources and processes the EU already commands towards this issue and what resources and processes it lacks. Prof. Schilde’s previous research traced how private sector and market actors shaped EU defense and security policy development. Her current book project builds on this to analyze the EU as a 21st century security state, examining three key questions: 1) how are the EU’s regulatory and infrastructural powers similar in function to other modern security states; 2) how does and can the EU harness these state-like capacities to meet security obligations in Europe and beyond; and 3) how does the EU coordinate between member state/EU authority and private/market actors to generate defense capacity. The project compares the EU to other contemporary security states, examining how modern states exercise security authority through regulation, infrastructure, industrial policy, and market coordination rather than direct taxation or standing armies.

At the same time, vulnerabilities in the integration project hinder the EU’s ability to fully leverage its latent security state capacities. EURYDICE will address these challenges in two ways. First, it will analyze how the EU can better harness its existing regulatory and infrastructural power to strengthen European security integration, particularly with regards to industrial policy over defense industrial markets and institutional capacity. Second, it will increase awareness among students, policy practitioners, and the public of how the EU already functions as a security actor through its monetary, legal, and regulatory authority.

EURYDICE will strengthen both theoretical understanding and policy implementation by examining how the EU and other modern states navigate tensions between public and private security provision, focusing on areas like defense research and innovation, supply chain procurement, and transnational defense projects. This comparative analysis demonstrates how modern states, including the EU, increasingly rely on regulatory power and market coordination rather than direct state capacity for generating strategic outcomes.

The Project

Teaching

Prof. Schilde will revise her existing course “North Atlantic and European Security” into “The EU as a 21st Century Security Actor/State,” redirecting its focus to examine the nature of the EU as a security and defense actor, and the various latent, active, and possible mechanisms for how the EU functions–and can better function–as a 21st century security state. This revision builds directly from her current research on regulatory power, defense industrial policy, and infrastructural state capacity. The restructuring removes NATO-centric military operations course content (50% revision) and introduces the infrastructural capacities (and further possibilities) for how the EU generates and deploys security power within its institutional foundations. Prof. Schilde will structure the course around her theoretical framework that positions the EU as a regulatory security state wielding infrastructural, market, and judicial powers to achieve security objectives.

Research

Prof. Schilde will develop her theoretical framework of the EU as a 21st century security state into a book manuscript. The project advances beyond traditional interpretations of EU security capacity by demonstrating how the EU deploys regulatory and infrastructural power to achieve security objectives. Drawing from extensive archival research on early European defense cooperation and contemporary analysis of EU defense initiatives, the book will show how the EU’s political development has been shaped by bellicist pressures, particularly during key periods in the early 20th century and again in the 21st century.

The book will challenge conventional frameworks for analyzing EU security capabilities by demonstrating how modern security states, including the EU, rely primarily on regulatory power and market coordination rather than direct military capacity. Prof. Schilde will trace how the EU harnesses its monetary, judicial, and market authorities to generate defense capacity, comparing these mechanisms to other contemporary security states. This analysis provides both a theoretical contribution to state formation literature and practical insights for understanding the EU’s evolving role in international security, particularly in response to current geopolitical challenges.

Outreach

Prof. Schilde will develop an annual workshop series on EU Defense Capabilities and Strategic Autonomy. The capabilities, and to identify concrete areas where the EU can build upon its existing regulatory and infrastructural powers. Rather than cataloging EU shortcomings or proposing unrealistic reforms, these workshops will focus on practical ways the EU can leverage and enhance its current authorities and competencies. This solution-oriented approach draws together scholars who understand both the EU’s institutional constraints and its potential for strategic development.

The series will consist of three annual workshops, each examining distinct aspects of EU defense capabilities: institutional capacity, geopolitical networks and conditions, and defense industrial integration. Drawing from a network of leading European and American scholars, the workshops will explore how the EU is transforming its approach to defense equipment and strategic autonomy. Specific areas of investigation will include the European Defence Fund (EDF), Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), and the EU’s response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has dramatically accelerated defense coordination efforts.

The first workshop will focus on institutional capacity, analyzing how the EU uses market regulation to shape defense industrial ecosystems, with a focus on mechanisms like tax reforms, technology transfer, and foreign arms sales policies, which reduce market uncertainty for defense firms and incentivize research and development.

The second and third workshops will examine geopolitical response capabilities and defense industrial integration respectively, investigating the EU’s authority in defense markets and its infrastructural network powers. The EU possesses limited but emerging direct authorities for generating defense outputs, including its evolving judicial, monetary, and coordinating capacities for strategic defense investments, such as the innovative financial mechanisms used in the NextGen EU response.

These workshops will also explore how institutional networks and cross-national collaboration enable defense technology development, particularly in complex multinational weapons projects. Specific topics for discussion within the workshop include: the role of the US in collaborative arms development projects, the impact of non-European suppliers on European defense capabilities, financing mechanisms for cross-national technology development, strategies for supporting high-risk defense research, mechanisms for protecting and developing smaller national defense industries, long-term industrial policy frameworks for strategic resilience, the European Defence Industrial Strategy, mechanisms for reducing procurement fragmentation, the dynamics of “tournament goods” in defense markets—highly specialized technologies with extended development cycles and significant market failure risks, and regulatory strategies to incentivize cross-national collaboration.