The paper conceptualises the European defence pillar as the outcome of three structural preference drivers rather than a single institutional blueprint. The first is transatlantic rebalancing, ranging from strongly Atlanticist positions to support for greater European autonomy in deterrence and defence. The second concerns the governance model of European defence, between an intergovernmental NATO‑centred scheme and a more supranational approach anchored in the European Union. The third is the industrial dilemma between national sovereignty and the integration of defence markets, capabilities and value chains at European scale.​

On this basis, the research proposes a survey of institutions in the Network of European Strategic Studies Institutions (NESSI) to map how they currently conceive this pillar at the intersection of these three dimensions and whether it is ordered along a latent axis of “strategic Europeanism” or by hybrid combinations of preferences. The methodological approach, based on composite indices for each driver and correlation analysis between them, offers a tool to turn a normative and often abstract debate into a structured map of the state of the art on the European defence pillar among NESSI’s main strategic institutions.​