Europeanisation of military training and education
In the aftermath of the Cold War, European armed forces embarked on an ongoing transformation of their professional military education systems. At its core lies unprecedented restructuring of military colleges into defence universities. Instead of the teaching college, characterised by military-focused curriculum and uniformed faculty and student body, there is the establishment of research universities, supervised by civilian-military public authorities where an academic qualified faculty educates military and civilian university alike. As military education plays a key role not only in commissioning and qualifying officers as commanders and staff officers, but also in equipping them with professional ethics, attitudes and values then these changes have significant implications for military preparedness and civil-military relations. The EU-funded project 'The Europeanization of military training and education' (EUROMITE) offers the first comprehensive analysis of the origins, trends and implications of the emergence of the National Defence Universities (NDUs) in Europe. The project compares the main military education institutions of the Baltic States, Finland, Romania, Germany and the United Kingdom. The project relies on several qualitative methodologies including phone and in-person interviews, thematic analysis of a wide collection of primary sources and a historical study of the evolution of post-Cold War European military education. Project findings indicate that the development of the national defence universities is enhanced and supported by transnational collaboration, resulting in the emergence of European epistemic community of military education. The activity of this epistemic community leads to the construction of a European military culture. However, in contrast to the common debate in literature whether such development takes place within NATO or the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the project finds that in practice the NDUs uses opportunities offered by both institutions. This suggests that while the NATO/CSDP debate is relevant at the national level, a more multi-layered approach should be taken to study developments at the armed forces, services and even unit levels. Additionally, the project finds that the emerging common military culture cantered on the concept of crisis management. Therefore the project has significant policy-oriented implications, regarding the skills and knowledge of European officers, the level of armed forces interoperability, as well as the readiness to carry out crisis management operations.