Often based on contributions from a coalition of member states, each of the eighteen Battlegroups consists of a battalion-sized force reinforced with combat support elements (1,500 troops).

In 2004, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the plans and emphasised the value and importance of the Battlegroups in helping the UN deal with troublespots.

[6] The initial idea to create EU multinational roughly battalion-sized combined arms units was first publicly raised at the European Council summit on 10–11 December 1999 in Helsinki.

The Council produced the Headline Goal 2003 and specified the need for a rapid response capability that members should provide in small forces at high readiness.

The idea was reiterated at a Franco-British summit on 4 February 2003 in Le Touquet which highlighted as a priority the need to improve rapid response capabilities, "including initial deployment of land, sea and air forces within 5–10 days.

The following Franco-British summit in November of that year stated that, building on the experience of the operation, the EU should be able and willing to deploy forces within 15 days in response to a UN request.

This combined with the fact that EU Battlegroups have never been deployed (due to slow political decision-making), despite several occasions in which they according to various experts could or should have been (most notably DR Congo in 2006 and 2008 and Libya in 2011), has led to increasing gaps in the standby roster.

For the EU Battlegroups specifically, the plan aims to remove the obstacles preventing their rapid deployment, such as the lack of a European military headquarters.

Although stressing that NATO will remain the most important defence organisation for many EU countries, Mogherini stated that the Union should be able to operate 'autonomously if necessary' on security matters.

This included new possibilities for the rapid deployment of EU Battlegroups with aerial support for civil and military operations in conflict zones outside Europe, for example, before a UN peacekeeping force can arrive.

[13] Besides Brexit and the election of Trump, Russia's military expansionism and the European migrant crisis motivated them as well, making them agree relatively easily, which analysts regarded as a breakthrough.

[23] At the late May 2022 planning conference for the EU Battlegroup 2025 in Vienna involving 10 EU states, it was decided that the RDC concept was to be finalised by the end of 2022, the advanced battlegroup would include up to 5,000 soldiers from Germany and the Netherlands (lead), Austria (logistics), Hungary, Croatia, and other member states, joint exercises and training would commence in 2023, the force was to be fully operational by 2025, and would be deployed for 12 months in areas up to 6,000 kilometres measured from Brussels.

The Battlegroups are instead meant for more rapid and shorter deployment in international crises, probably preparing the ground for a larger and more traditional force to replace them in due time.

In a policy vision titled "Towards a Western Balkans Battlegroup: A vision of Serbia's Defence Integration into the EU 2010-2020",[70] they argued that the creation of such a Battlegroup would not only be an accelerating factor in the accession of the former Yugoslav republics into the EU, but also a strong symbolic message of reconciliation and security community reconstruction after the devastating wars of the 1990s.

Furthermore, the authors of the study argued that such a Western Balkan Battlegroup, notwithstanding all the political challenges, would have a very high linguistic, cultural and military interoperability.

Although decision makers initially showed a weak interest in the Western Balkans Battlegroup, the idea has recently reappeared in the parliamentary discussions in Serbia.

[72] In June 2014, EUBG 2014 II with 3,000 troops from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, the Netherlands and Spain conducted a training exercise in the Ardennes, codenamed 'Quick Lion', to prevent ethnic violence between the "Greys" and the "Whites" in the imaginary country of "Blueland".