This Analysis addresses one of the sensitive issues of the European Defence Fund (EDFEF): that of third countries. In what terms can the latter be associated with the European Union's (EU) capability ambitions?

The EU has already partly answered this question. It is ready to open the doors of the Fund, but only on its terms. However, the requirements imposed are not suitable for everyone. They were received coldly across the Channel and were considered unacceptable across the Atlantic. Washington has thus activated its relays to push the Union to change the rules of the game.

Pressure from the United States is a major challenge for Europeans. At a time of Brexit and "Trumpism", the Fund's eligibility criteria are a crucial issue for the EU. They refer to both the means and the end of its integration project.

Crédit photo : ha-ber.com

Manufacturing processes consisting in adding layers of material, widely referred to as ‘3D printing’, have been used in many industrial sectors for decades. With the development of printing material aimed at facilitating ‘individual’ production among laymen came some concern about a possible 3D printed proliferation of firearms. In the wake of the much publicized manufacture of a plastic-made, 3D printed gun by a young American hobbyist in 2013, EU law enforcement agencies began watching over the phenomenon so as to assess its potential. Although it poses risks to marking and identification, illicit 3D manufacturing of firearms has failed to entrench itself as a significant source of supply for criminal end-users. 3D printed prototypes suffer such key shortfalls as lack of reliability, underperforming characteristics incompatible with criminal requirements while they have to compete with other illicit sources of supply. However, it remains crucial to keep following with technical, technological and economic developments of 3D printing in order to best anticipate any game-changer in the illicit proliferation picture.

Photo credit: The 3D-printed "Liberator" gun designed by Defense Distributed (source : theverge.com)

Since the 1990s, drug trafficking networks have been infiltrating Kenyan communication and economic infrastructures. Forced to divert from their main routes, networks have found in Kenya the key elements they needed to transit drugs from Asian producers to European consumers. Since Kenya is an indirect transit hub, the development of drug trafficking has gone relatively unnoticed until the 2010s. From then onwards, increased seizures along the maritime routes, and an upsurge in drug consumption in Nairobi and Mombasa, have started alerting national and international actors. This Analysis demonstrates that far from being a second-class route, Kenya presents endogenous elements on which traffics thrive. The country’s communication and transport infrastructures, coupled with crippling corruption problems and high capacity deficiencies within the police forces and the judicial system, prevent any viable counter-trafficking action. Moreover, exogenous factors foster traffics in Kenya:  its large uncontrolled maritime front and borders allow traffics, redirected from the main routes, to go unnoticed.

Crédit photo : saisie de drogue au Kenya (source : FILE)

On 14 December 2018, the Parliament in Priština decided to transform the Kosovo Security Force, mainly dedicated to civil protection, into typical military forces. While Belgrade and the local Serb minority have strongly condemned this initiative that circumvents the Kosovo constitution, the UN and the NATO have been concerned about the consequences of this move, particularly for the relations between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.

However, in the short term, this new army, even with the support of the great powers that sponsored the independence of Kosovo, does not seem to be able to threaten its neighbours, and Serbia in particular. In fact, the new government in the making, resulting of an unprecedented coalition, will struggle to find sufficient resources to build armed forces that meet the “highest NATO criteria” to which reference is constantly being made. The main objective of the creation of this army would then be to prove that, despite appearances, Kosovo is indeed a “state like the others”.

Photo credit: President Thaçi inspects KSF troops the day before the laws creating the Kosovo army were passed. (Stringer/EPA/EFE).