The Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) enables European Union to take a leading role in peace – keeping operations, conflict prevention and the strengthening of the international security. It is an integral part of EU’s comprehensive approach towards crisis management, drawing on civilian and military assets. EU Battle Groups remain important for CSDP as the only military capabilities on standby for possible EU operations and as they are helping to reinforce the effectiveness Member States’ of military forces. EU Battle Groups are multinational, military units and form an integral part of the EU’s military rapid reaction capacity to respond to emerging crises and conflicts around the world. Therefore, Polish diplomacy actively acts in various forums (the Visegrad Group, the Weimar Triangle) to bolster the CSDP. Poland actively involved in the implementation of the CSDP through participation in EU Battle Groups.

In this paper, the authors attempt to prove that the Polish position on developing the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) was skeptical, despite entries in political and strategic documents which emphasized its great significance for Polish security policy. It is evidenced by Poland’s low level of involvement in EU missions and operations and other undertakings in the CSDP area. The central hypothesis adopted at the beginning of the research is that Poland has always treated security and defense within the European Union as a kind of complement to the potential and capabilities developed within the framework of the North Atlantic Alliance, and the Polish involvement in CSDP has never been adequate to the provisions contained in political and strategic documents. Poland’s stance resulted, on the one hand, from the weakness of the CSDP’s political framework, which was shaped by numerous compromises among its member states, and on the other hand, from the political elite’s conviction that only NATO’s, and de facto the United States’, security guarantees are credible. In this paper, the authors analyze Poland’s previous experience resulting from polish participation in the policy in question and the evolution of Poland’s position toward its development in the context of the Republic of Poland’s security interests formulated in political and strategic documents.