ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to restate the key findings of the empirical chapters and provide an overall response to the three guiding questions. The responses to the questions correlate with each other, seeing the conception of the EU as a security actor intimately linked to the EU as a normative and inter-regional actor. Specifically, the chapters reveal that the NTS crisis-centred lens assists in working out cross-regional issue awareness and hence, enhanced actor sensitivity to the contiguity between security and NTS-developmental themes. Although, in theory, this contiguity enhances the EU’s scope of inter-regional action and recognition as a security actor in Southeast Asia, it complicates clear understanding of the EU’s security, as well as normative, profile on site. This having been said, the EU does not seek strategic engagement in Southeast Asia that could rival those activities of the EU and non-EU state powers with actual strategic stakes and military presence in the Asia-Pacific. The EU as a collective actor is seemingly comfortable with its broad view and comprehensive approach to security issues of the region.
