Collateral Damage: How EU Internal Policies Shape Crises and Conflict Abroad

Europe is increasingly affected by conflicts in its neighbourhood, but its ability to prevent and resolve them remains limited. This dilemma underlines the need for European foreign and security policy to make optimal use of tools, assets and resources available. The EU’s main framework to do so, the Integrated Approach to Conflicts and Crises, emphasises traditionally external policy sectors such as diplomacy, defence and development cooperation, but neglects tools and policy sectors predominantly understood as internal. Conceptually, the EU has acknowledged the need to employ the entire range of tools and instruments in its whole-of-governance approach to conflict, but when it comes to implementation, internal policy areas are barely part of the equation. A few policy areas with obvious internal-external linkages such as migration, energy or climate are more advanced conceptually. However, a systematic integration of internal policy areas into the calculus of how EU policy impacts human security abroad remains absent.