Minilateralism as a Variety of Defence Cooperation in Europe: Contribution to the ‘Practice Turn’ through the Military Programme A400M Case Study

In 2003, seven European states including Germany, France and the United Kingdom decided to produce a new military transport aircraft together: the A400M. These states implement this programme within an international organisation separate from the EU, the Organisation for Joint Armament Co-operation (OCCAR). The industrial prime contractor for this military programme is the European corporation EADS (now Airbus). Companies from all seven countries are involved in the industrial development of the aircraft. This cooperation is neither bilateral nor multilateral, the two most common forms of international collaboration. It refers to a form of collaboration that is little-known, integrating a small group of states and called ‘minilateral’. Why do European states decide to choose ‘minilateral’ defence cooperation rather than bilateral or multilateral cooperation? This article develops a relational argument which is part of the ‘practice turn’ developped in IR theories and EU studies from the beginning of the 2000s. It demonstrates the political effect of social interdependence on the decision-making process by mobilizing the concept of "configuration" developed by the German sociologist Norbert Elias. Minilateral collaboration results from a shift in the structure of interdependence relations between state (civil and military) and industrial actors at the national level in the 1990s. The result is a progressive untiedness of defence companies vis-à-vis the state, whose EADS’s birth is symptomatic. The case of the A400M program is enlightened by the decision-making of French actors (state and corporations). The reconstitution of their positions required a fieldwork (105 semi-structured interviews).