Global Constraints, External Crises, Internal Challenges: What Future for the EU’s Security?

This Section aims to address the EU’s challenging task as security actor. In the last decades, the rise of new threats and risks (terrorism, cyber-crimes, and hybrid warfare) and the increase or rapid transformation of the ‛classical’ ones (wars, massive immigration due to climate change or to prolonged internal state insecurity) have shown the fragility of Europe. The EU seems unable to protect its citizens against a series of threats, which have substantial consequences on its population. In addition, the EU appears powerless in limiting its growing irrelevance at the world stage, with its lower performance, especially if we compare the last years with the EU’s international engagement in the 1990s (see the CSDP operations’ involvement). The EU’s weakness finds an explanation in the current global political framework, where we witness, on the one side, the competition between United States, Russia, and China for a leading role, and, on the other, a more fluid international landscape affected by Trump’s administration and Putin’s assertive foreign policy. However, the member states’ domestic interplays and their security national interests should not be neglected as well. In this Section, we aim to discuss which kind of constraints, crises and challenges are the most compelling for the EU and how these affect EU security policies’ transformation. Panels will seek to unwrap the complex panorama of the EU’s security, where several actors, rules and processes at different levels of governance deal with security transformation.