The EU: from comprehensive vision to integrated action

The need to coordinate the various entities and policies of the EU in the field of security and development has been acknowledged since the very beginning of the Union’s aspiration to play a role in world politics. With the Joint Communication on the ‘EU’s comprehensive approach to external conflict and crises’ in 2013, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) and the Commission laid the foundations of a joined-up policy to more effectively respond to the causes and manifestations of instability. The recent EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) sought to move this forward by introducing the concept of an ‘integrated approach to conflicts and crises’ that has since become one of the Strategy’s follow-up work strands (together with security and defence, resilience, the internal-external security nexus, updating existing strategies and public diplomacy).