THE EU-NATO RELATIONSHIP AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CSDP

For this Bachelor thesis, I will perform a longitudinal study on the development of the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in relation to the existing relation of another organisation with similar objectives: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Specifically, I will study the impact NATO has had on the progress of the development of the EU’s CSDP. This study will be performed on the basis of a mixture of descriptive and empirical questions. The data underlying this research will mainly be policy documents, treaty texts and academic analyses. The leading research question is the following: ‘To what extent has the development of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy been facilitated or hampered by the existence of NATO?’