USTANOVA-CENTER ZA EVROPSKO PRIHODNOST

Their core work

The Centre for European Perspective (CEP) is a Slovenian policy research institute specializing in EU foreign and security policy, with a clear focus on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and EU civilian crisis management. Their H2020 contributions span both evaluating the operational effectiveness of EU civilian missions (IECEU) and shaping the next generation of information management systems that field missions actually use (CIVILnEXt). They act as domain-knowledge anchors in research consortia — translating EU institutional frameworks, mission mandates, and operational realities into research inputs that technically-oriented partners can work with. For any consortium that needs someone who understands how EU civilian missions are planned, staffed, evaluated, and reported, CEP fills a role that most universities and engineering firms cannot.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

CEP entered H2020 through a broad policy-evaluation lens — IECEU was about assessing whether EU conflict prevention capabilities are actually effective, a classic think-tank contribution. By their second project, the focus had shifted to the operational and technological layer: how information flows inside and around CSDP civilian missions, and what systems need to be built to improve that. This is a meaningful progression from "does the EU do this well?" to "what tools does the EU need to do this better?" The shift toward a Pre-Commercial Procurement instrument in CIVILnEXt further signals movement toward applied, procurement-driven innovation rather than pure policy analysis.

CEP is moving from policy evaluation toward operational technology — if this trajectory continues, future collaborations are likely to involve human factors, mission management tooling, or AI-assisted decision support for EU civilian deployments.

How they like to work

CEP has never led a project — both participations are as consortium member, which is consistent with a think tank that brings domain expertise rather than technical infrastructure or administrative capacity. Despite only two projects, they accumulated 23 unique partners across 13 countries, which means they are embedded in large, multi-national consortia rather than small bilateral arrangements. This profile suggests they are sought out for their CSDP institutional knowledge and are comfortable operating inside complex international research teams without holding the coordination reins.

With 23 unique consortium partners across 13 countries from only two projects, CEP operates inside unusually broad European networks for its size — the CSDP domain naturally draws partners from across EU member states and accession countries. No repeated partnership patterns are detectable from this data, suggesting diverse rather than recurring consortia.

What sets them apart

CEP offers something rare in CSDP research consortia: an independent Slovenian institution with direct analytical expertise in EU foreign policy and civilian mission design, sitting between the EU institutional world and the academic security studies field. Slovenia's specific position — a small EU member state with active engagement in EU enlargement, Western Balkans policy, and European integration — gives CEP a perspective on EU external action that larger Western European research centers often lack. For coordinators building consortia around EU civilian missions or CSDP procurement projects, CEP fills the policy-legitimacy and stakeholder-knowledge role that neither engineering firms nor large universities can credibly occupy.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CIVILnEXt
  Largest funding in the portfolio (EUR 135,450) and the only Pre-Commercial Procurement project — a procurement instrument designed to develop genuinely new operational tools, meaning CEP contributed to shaping actual CSDP mission technology, not just writing policy papers about it.
• IECEU
  Foundational project in EU civilian mission effectiveness assessment, providing the policy-evaluation baseline on which CEP's later, more operational work in CIVILnEXt was built.