After Afghanistan: The European Union as Security Provider in Africa

The European Council’s 2003 “European Security Strategy” emphasised that hard security had become a common European interest in relation to developing countries. Concretely, the strategy points at terrorism, regional conflicts, state failure and organised crime as threats to Europe. “With the new threats, the new line of defense will often be abroad … this implies that we should be ready to act before the crisis occurs. Conflict prevention and threat prevention cannot start too early”, it was stated.1