Reviving the Europe of defence has been announced as one of the French presidency of the European Union’s top priorities as early as summer 2007. Yet, three major and unforeseen events have changed dramatically changed the situation : the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008, the conflict between Russia and Georgia in August, and finally the world economy crisis in mid-September. Therefore, the French presidency of the European Union has yielded mitigated results. While the European Security Strategy update did not manage to turn into a bona fide strategic approach, pooling important elements of military capacity may make the ESDP evolve from the experimental stage into an operational force. Moreover, as the European Union has been asked to intervene of numerous fronts, it has become by way of things an increasingly major player on the international scene.