Permanent Structured Cooperation

The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) is the structural integration pursued by 25 of the 28 national armed forces of the European Union (EU), based on Article 42.6 and Protocol 10 of the Treaty on European Union and incorporated in the Union's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). PESCO was enabled by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 and initiated in 2017, with the initial integration being a number of projects planned to launch in 2018.

Together with the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) and the European Defence Fund it forms a new comprehensive defence package for the EU.

PESCO is similar to enhanced co-operation in other policy areas, in the sense that integration does not require that all EU member states participate.

Pre-activation
PESCO was first written into the European Constitution under Article III-312, which failed ratification, and then into the Treaty of Lisbon of 2009. It added the possibility for those members whose military capabilities fulfil higher criteria and which have made more binding commitments to one another in this area with a view to the most demanding missions shall establish permanent structured cooperation (PESCO) within the EU framework. PESCO was seen as the way to enable the common defence foreseen in Article 42, but the scepticism towards further integration that had arisen around the rejection of the European Constitution meant its activation was unlikely. It was termed, by President Jean-Claude Juncker as the Lisbon Treaty's "sleeping beauty".

In the 2010s, the geopolitical landscape around the EU began to change, triggering a series of crisis. The Libyan Civil War, Syrian Civil War and rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant caused the European migrant crisis. In 2014 Russia intervened in Ukraine, annexing Crimea and triggering an ongoing conflict in the country over the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement. In 2016 Donald J. Trump was elected as President of the United States on a platform of criticising NATO allies, refusing on several occasions to back the mutual defence clause, and the United Kingdom, one of the EU's two largest military powers, voted to withdraw from the EU.

This new environment, while very different from the one PESCO was designed for, gave new impetus to European defence cooperation. The withdrawal of the UK, a historic opponent of EU defence, gave further hope of its success. At a rally in Bavaria, Angela Merkel argued that: “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over ... I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.” In late 2016, the EU put defence co-operation on its post-Brexit Bratislava and Rome declarations.

There was some disagreement between France and Germany about the nature of PESCO. France foresaw an small but ambitious group with serious capabilities making major practical leaps forward while Germany, weary of further splits in the EU, wanted a more inclusive approach that could potentially include every state, regardless of their military capability or willingness to integrate. Further, for Germany it was abould building capabilities and giving a post-Brexit signal of unity, whereas France was focused on operations and looking for help for its overstretched African deployments. Their compromise was to re-imagine PESCO as a process. PESCO would be inclusive, but not all states had to take part in all projects and progress would be phased allowing the development of new, common capabilities without having to resolve larger differences on end-goals first. Further, states would not need to already have capabilities, but merely pledge to work towards them. This allowed France's idea of improving military capabilities without shutting out states who did not already attain the threshold.

Activation
On 7 September 2017 an agreement was made between EU foreign affairs ministers to move forward with PESCO with 10 initial projects. The agreement was signed on 13 November by 23 of the 28 members states. Ireland and Portugal notified the High Representative and the Council of the European Union of their desire to join PESCO on 7 December 2017 and PESCO was activated by the 25 states on 11 December 2017. Denmark did not participate as it has an opt-out from the Common Security and Defence Policy, nor did the United Kingdom, which is scheduled to withdraw from the EU in 2019. Malta opted-out as well.

Principles
"Those Member States whose military capabilities fulfil higher criteria and which have made more binding commitments to one another in this area with a view to the most demanding missions shall establish permanent structured cooperation within the Union framework. Such cooperation shall be governed by Article 46. It shall not affect the provisions of Article 43."

Those states shall notify their intention to the Council and to the High Representative. The Council then adopts, by qualified majority a decision establishing PESCO and determining the list of participating Member States. Any other member state, that fulfills the criteria and wishes to participate, can join the PSCD following the same procedure, but in the voting for the decision will participate only the states already part of the PSCD. If a participating state no longer fulfills the criteria a decision suspending its participation is taken by the same procedure as for accepting new participants, but excluding the concerned state from the voting procedure. If a participating state wishes to withdraw from PSCD it just notifies the Council to remove it from the list of participants. All other decisions and recommendations of the Council concerning PSCD issues unrelated to the list of participants are taken by unanimity of the participating states.

The criteria established in the PSCD Protocol are the following:
 * co-operate and harmonise requirements and pool resources in the fields related to defence equipment acquisition, research, funding and utilisation, notably the programmes and initiatives of the European Defence Agency (e.g. Code of Conduct on Defence Procurement)
 * capacity to supply, either at national level or as a component of multinational force groups, targeted combat units for the missions planned, structured at a tactical level as a battle group, with support elements including transport (airlift, sealift) and logistics, within a period of five to 30 days, in particular in response to requests from the United Nations, and which can be sustained for an initial period of 30 days and be extended up to at least 120 days.
 * capable of carrying out in the above timeframes the tasks of joint disarmament operations, humanitarian and rescue tasks, military advice and assistance tasks, conflict prevention and peace-keeping tasks, tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making and post-conflict stabilisation

Participating armed forces
The following member states have announced their intention of participating in PESCO: The only non-participant EU member states are;
 * Denmark: which has a permanent opt-out from the common defence policy.
 * Malta: which wants to see how PESCO develops first.
 * United Kingdom: which is scheduled to withdraw from the EU in 2019.

While the UK is withdrawing, PESCO is being developed to allow participation of third-states in the future. Norway is another country which this could apply to, as it is been active in past EU military operations.

Neutral states
PESCO includes four of the five EU states that describe themselves as neutral (Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden), and is designed to be as inclusive as possible by allowing states to opt in or out as their unique foreign policies allow. Some members of the Irish Parliament considered Ireland joining Pesco as an abandonment of neutrality. It was passed with the government arguing that its opt-in nature allowed Ireland to "join elements of PESCO that were beneficial such as counter-terrorism, cyber security and peace keeping ... what we are not going to be doing is buying aircraft carriers and fighter jets." Malta, the only neutral state not to participate, argued that it was going to wait and see how Pesco develops, in order to see whether it would compromise Maltese neutrality.

Governance
PESCO has a two-layer structure:
 * Council Level: Responsible for the overall policy direction and decision-making including as regards the assessment mechanism to determine if Member States are fulfilling their commitments. Only PESCO members are voting, decisions are taken by unanimity (except decisions regarding the suspension of membership and entry of new members which are taken by qualified majority).
 * Projects Level: Each project will be managed by those member states that contribute to it, in line with general rules for project management to be developed at overarching level.

Secretariat
The European Defence Agency and External Action Service will act as PESCO's secretariat.

Funding
PESCO projects will be incentivised by the European Commission’s newly established European Defence Fund.

Planned
The first PESCO projects started with a list of 50 ideas and was whittled down to provide a short list of small-scale projects. Major armament projects are intended in the future (EU forces use 178 different weapon systems compared to 30 in the US), but initially PESCO is to be focused on smaller operations to lay groundwork.

List of first collaborative PESCO projects as of 2017 listed with country participation:

Potential
Potential future PESCO projects include the following existing intergovernmental cooperations between member states' militaries, presently outside the CSDP framework:

Forces and command centres:
 * European Corps
 * European Gendarmerie Force
 * European Air Transport Command
 * European Maritime Force
 * Movement Coordination Centre Europe

Bodies fostering integration:
 * European Air Group
 * Finabel
 * Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation