Initial Briefing for Practitioners #2

How can the EU – both its institutions and its Member States – effectively and sustainably harness all of its tools in a joined-up external action alongside the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in order to meet strategic challenges and become a stronger global actor?

To answer this question, researchers in the ENGAGE project are studying internal and external challenges to the EU, four interlocking policy dimensions of the EU’s external action (CSDP, CFSP, external action and external action plus) and three strategic objectives (engaging with strategic partners, engaging with the EU’s neighbourhoods and engaging in conflict resolution, prevention and mediation).

This brief presents practitioner-oriented implications from the research conducted across all areas in the second year of the project. Four sets of takeaways are presented. For each takeaway, a link is included to the original research paper it was derived from.