CIAO DATE: 10/2013
October 2009
European Centre for Minority Issues
In its 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS), the EU has a grand strategy, embracing all instruments and resources at the disposal of the Union and the Member States, but a partial one. The ESS tells us how to do things – in a preventive, holistic and multilateral way – but it is much vaguer on what to do: what are the concrete objectives and priorities of the EU as a global actor? The recent debate about the ESS, resulting in the 2008 Report about the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, failed to answer this question. Offering little in terms of recommendations for the future, the Report creates an impression of unfinished business, which the EU can ill afford now that the Lisbon Treaty will change the institutional set-up of its foreign and security policy, NATO has launched a strategic debate of its own to which an EU contribution is essential, and the EU risks being overshadowed by the much more purposive emerging powers or BRICs. Regardless of one’s initial opinion about its opportunity, a fully-fledged strategic review is now in order, with the aim of completing the ESS. The first rule of strategy-making is to know thyself. Which values and interests should our grand strategy safeguard? Europe has in fact a very distinctive social model, combining democracy, the market economy and strong government intervention. Preserving and strengthening this internal social contract between the EU and its citizens, guaranteeing them security, economic prosperity, political freedom and social well-being, is the fundamental objective of the EU, both internally and as a global actor. The conditions that have to be fulfilled to allow that constitute the EU’s vital interests: defence against any military threat to the territory of the Union; open lines of communication and trade (in physical as well as in cyber space); a secure supply of energy and other vital natural resources; a clean environment; manageable migration flows; the maintenance of international law and universally agreed rights; and autonomy of EU decision-making.
Resource link: The value of power, the power of values: a call for an EU Grand Strategy [PDF] - 324K