The EU as a Global-Regional Actor in Security and Peace (EU-GRASP)

EU-GRASP (Changing multilateralism: The EU as a global-regional actor in security and peace) was a European Union (EU) funded project under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). EU-GRASP was a 3-year project that started in February 2009 and ended in January 2012. EU-GRASP was composed by a consortium of nine partners. While the project was coordinated by the United Nations University - Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), Bruges, Belgium, its other partners are drawn from across the globe.

These were:

  • University of Warwick (United Kingdom (UK)),
  • University of Gothenburg (Sweden),
  • Florence Forum on the Problems of Peace and War (Italy),
  • KULeuven (Belgium),
  • Centre for International Governance Innovation (Canada),
  • Peking University (China), Institute for Security Studies (South Africa) and
  • Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel).

The project work plan consisted of the following components:

  • Conceptual integrated analyses of the evolving concepts of multilateralism and security and the EU's role as a security actor.
  • Case-studies of the EU's approach to a number of specific security issues (regional conflict, terrorism, WMD proliferation, migration, energy and climate change, and severe violations of human rights).
  • A transversal comparative analysis applying and integrating the case-study findings.
  • A foresight study, building on the project's findings that will detail scenarios for future EU policy towards external security relations and multilateral approaches to threats and challenges.