Global and Operational: A New Strategy for EU Foreign and Security Policy

Strategists of Europe, rejoice! The June 2015 European Council mandated High Representative Federica Mogherini to prepare “an EU global strategy on foreign and security policy” by June 2016. Fully twelve years after the adoption of the European Security Strategy (ESS), the chance to revisit the EU’s grand strategy should be grasped with both hands. What could the new strategy most usefully say and promote? What makes Europe the most equal continent, providing the greatest security, freedom, and prosperity, is the European Social Model. It contains the principles and the values at the heart of EU, that also shape its vital interests. Bearing in mind this assumption, the new ESS should fulfil three functions: define strategic priorities, set a limited number of overall objectives and communicate how the EU sees its role in the world. In sum, on the basis of a geopolitical analysis of the regional and global environment, this coming strategizing effort aims to identify the most important threats and challenges to Europe’s vital interests, and to define priority objectives to which end the preventive, comprehensive, and multilateral method must be applied. How to do that? This paper offers some thoughts.

Paper prepared within the context of “Governing Europe”, a joint project led by the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Centro Studi sul Federalismo (CSF) of Turin in the framework of the strategic partnership with Compagnia di San Paolo, International Affairs Programme. Publ. in: Lorenzo Vai, Pier Domenico Tortola, Nicoletta Pirozzi (eds.), Governing Europe. How to Make the EU More Efficient and Democratic, Bruxelles [etc], P.I.E-Peter Lang, 2017, 248 p. (Federalism ; 8), ISBN 978-2-8076-0058-4 (pbk); 978-2-8076-0059-1 (pdf); 978-2-8076-0060-7 (EPUB); DOI: 10.3726/b10699.