ABSTRACT
There is an increasing amount of scholarship on the EU’s international security role, but most of it remains focused on security aspects in specific policy areas, such as Union enlargement, European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), development assistance and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).1 Some scholars have also examined the Union’s role in this regard across various regions of the world2 or discussed it in the context of (grand) strategy3 and strategic culture.4
Another strand in the literature has focused on particular conceptions of security,
such as human security or comprehensive security, and how they are reflected in EU policy.5 A number of authors examine the EU’s place in the international arena of security organisations and the way in which the Union manages to find its place and cooperate (or not) with other actors that have been engaged in this area-often much longer than the EU.6 Finally, there is a persistent strand of scholarship focused on the EU’s internal processes of security policy making within and among EU institutions and member states as well as increasingly between them.7
Most of this otherwise relevant literature, however, remains focused on the actual process of policy making and its institutionalisation, including the dynamics of inter-governmental bargaining and linkages between EU institutions and member states.8 A considerably smaller, albeit growing body of literature is
