Final Report on Global Cooperation

With the publication of the European Security Strategy in 2003 the EU clearly stated that in order for Europe to be “more secure in a better world” it needed to make more use of effective multilateralism (European Council 2003). This was in fact not the first time that the EU expressed its willingness to engage in multilateral cooperation. In 2001 the Commission had already published a document stating its eagerness to work in the field of development and humanitarian affairs with the UN as an embodiment of multilateralism. Similarly the Council, via its Joint Declaration on EU-UN cooperation in Crisis Management, expressed its attachment to multilateralism and its readiness to work with the global organisation.
This report takes stock of the previous report on the EU and global cooperation and integrates to it some of the findings of the case studies as highlighted in the Horizontal reports drafted for each of the security issues (as presented in Gothenburg February 2011). In doing so this reports focuses on the 5 points agreed during the workshop in Gothenburg. Namely, it focuses on (1) the EU's discourse, including the framing and development of the issue; (2) the security governance established by the EU and in particular, the means being used to deal with the issue, the actors involved, the differences that may exist between Brussels and the field or with the member states, the relations with other international organisations and the EU's actorness; (3) the relations between the EU's discourse and its security governance, (4) the impact of the EU's engagement and (5) the future after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the lesson learned in the process.