Abstract

Even a casual observer of EU security cooperation would take note of growing attention to the ‘internal-external security nexus' in recent years. Practitioners regularly trumpet the cross-border nature of modern security threats and call for a ‘joined up’ approach of internal and external security responses. Institutional actors announce initiatives that bring ‘together all internal and external dimensions of security’ (Commission 2015, 4), while inserting new goals into EU policies. The European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) devotes an entire section to bridging the internal/external security nexus, presaging the migration crisis and security challenges of the cyber-sphere. Indeed, in the wake of the rise and fall of the Islamic State in Syria and the so-called migration ‘crisis' since 2015, EU foreign policy more generally has transcended its traditional foreign policy aims of international peace and stability, as encapsulated in the Petersberg Tasks of 1992. Today, the EU's foreign policy attends to the goals of a ‘Security Union’, reflecting a geopolitical vision where by deterrence and resilience needs to be provided against ‘hybrid threats' as well as against irregular migration from Africa and the Middle East (Commission 2018).