EU Global Strategy Expert Opinion No.20 – Michael Leigh

European leaders handed HR/VP Federica Mogherini an impossible mission last June when they asked her to come up with an EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS). While Mogherini’s advisors prepare the EUGS, most of the threats predicted by Javier Solana’s 2003 security strategy are hitting the EU hard: terrorism, organised crime, state failure, and regional conflict. The refugee crisis is one of the results, with its disruptive effects and human suffering. In diverting energies into a new theoretical exercise, the EU risks fiddling while Rome burns.