The new rules for Frontex include the agency's ability to buy or lease its own equipment for missions, to assume a co-leading role in joint operations and to draw up detailed provision plans for its activities. But this progress has not been matched, and is not so readily in sight, despite the Lisbon treaty’s protocol on Permanent Structured Cooperation, and in light of defence budget cuts in many EU Member States, when it comes to the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy. Indeed, under the CSDP no agency such as Frontex is entrusted with operational planning or for rationalising the development of defence capabilities. This paper asks why the innovations now underway for Frontex are not equally applicable to CSDP by showing ways in which the Member States could use the "Frontex formula" as a guiding principle for the further development of defence policy.

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