ABSTRACT
The growing international ascendance of the EU has been long associated with a debate about the overarching guiding principles and objectives that inform and delimit the broad range of policies articulating the EU’s international identity. In 2003, the European Council adopted the European Security Strategy (ESS), which identified what the EU member-states perceived as the main security challenges as well as the appropriate way of dealing with them, multilaterally and in close cooperation with international organizations (IOs). The 2008 ESS revision has not altered substantially the EU security preoccupations, reinstating the increasingly complex nature of threats and challenges at regional and global level and the holistic EU approach to their tackling.
