The EU's Security Identity

This chapter explores on-going debates about the European Union's (EU's) general security identity. It describes the EU's sui generis foreign and security policy structures, and reports on how its external identity has been affected in recent years by the economic crisis. The chapter suggests a framework for how to match the EU's security identity to the strategic challenges posed by climate change. It presents analytical orientation by comparing the contrasting predictions of how such dilemmas will be addressed and also shows the EU's broader security identity might lead us to expect more of a tilt towards the liberal-cooperative framework. The common foreign and security policy (CFSP) is largely, although not purely, intergovernmental. It consists of cooperation between national governments, which pursue their own national diplomacy in parallel with EU cooperation. International trade policy is largely supranational and managed by the Commission as the Commission holds significant powers in the fields of development aid and energy and climate policy too.