The value of power and the power of values: a call for an EU grand strategy. Egmont Paper No. 33, October 2009

Biscop, Sven. (2009) The value of power and the power of values: a call for an EU grand strategy. Egmont Paper No. 33, October 2009. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

[From the Introduction]. In its 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS), the EU has a grand strategy, embracing all instruments and resources at the disposal of the Union and the Member States, but a partial one. The ESS tells us how to do things – in a preventive, holistic and multilateral way – but it is much vaguer on what to do: what are the concrete objectives and priorities of the EU as a global actor? The recent debate about the ESS, resulting in the 2008 Report about the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, failed to answer this question. Offering little in terms of recommendations for the future, the Report creates an impression of unfinished business, which the EU can ill afford now that the Lisbon Treaty will change the institutional set-up of its foreign and security policy, NATO has launched a strategic debate of its own to which an EU contribution is essential, and the EU risks being overshadowed by the much more purposive emerging powers or BRICs. Regardless of one’s initial opinion about its opportunity, a fully-fledged strategic review is now in order, with the aim of completing the ESS.

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