The perspectives of the Common Security and Defence Policy: from the Strategic Compass to EDIS

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the European institutions have reacted to the ‘return of war in Europe’. The European Union's first response was represented by the adoption of the Strategic Compass for Security and Defence in March 2022: a document that represented, first and foremost, a significant signal of political cohesion of the member states of the Union, as well as prospectively identifying an important action plan to relaunch, through the strengthening of instruments that the European Union already has, but also through the creation of new ones, the European security and defence policy. Therefore, first the content of the Compass will be analysed in detail, followed by an assessment of how the institutions have acted to implement it. In this regard, the first European Defence Strategy (EDIS) and the proposal of regulation for a European Defense Industrial Program (EDIP) will be evaluated.