EU and multilateral security governance

The recent concept of Security Governance applies the previous ideas of a reinvented multilateralism to security – arguing the need for a theoretical framework which moves beyond the traditional conceptions of security relations, including the different actors engaged in security (national, transnational, regional and global). Security Governance helps understand the proliferation of transnational cooperation and institutions among both state and non-state actors in the post cold-War era, when the new non-state threats are challenging the ability of sovereign nation states to ensure the security of their citizens.

The developing security concept stresses the inability of existing traditional multilateral frameworks to address the new challenges, and opens the way for new theoretical and cooperation processes that try to overcome the paradox of multilateralism in security – such as the ideas of New Regionalism and interregionalism, and multilateral security governance. EU-GRASP aims to push forward the existing body of research on multilevel governance from European governance to the role of the EU in global governance, using the model and stretching it to the area of security.

However, and as acknowledged above, especially in what security is concerned, there is a power shift within the international system – from states to new actors; and a power shift to new systems: from the ‘old world’ to emerging power (China, India…). EU-GRASP will take this as a starting point on the study of the EU as a security actor in the international system, in its relations with other old and new actors (through bilateral and multilateral relations). EU-GRASP proposes to take further the study of the EU, not necessarily a ‘state’, as concluded by the existing body of literature, but as a new actor with characteristics of both states and international organisations.