EU-GRASP, Changing Multilateralism: the EU as a Global-Regional Actor in Security and Peace

EU-GRASP (Changing multilateralism: The EU as a global-regional actor in security and peace) Project context and objectives: A more capable Europe is within our grasp (European Security Strategy, 2003) EU-GRASP is a European Union (EU) funded project under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). EU-GRASP was a 3-year project that started in February 2009 and ended in January 2012. EU-GRASP is composed by a consortium of nine partners. While the project is coordinated by the United Nations University - Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), Bruges, Belgium, its other partners are drawn from across the globe. These are: University of Warwick (United Kingdom (UK)), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Florence Forum on the Problems of Peace and War (Italy), KULeuven (Belgium), Centre for International Governance Innovation (Canada), Peking University (China), Institute for Security Studies (South Africa) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel). The project work plan consists of the following components: - Conceptual integrated analyses of the evolving concepts of multilateralism and security and the EU's role as a security actor. - Case-studies of the EU's approach to a number of specific security issues (regional conflict, terrorism, WMD proliferation, migration, energy and climate change, and severe violations of human rights). - A transversal comparative analysis applying and integrating the case-study findings. - A foresight study, building on the project's findings that will detail scenarios for future EU policy towards external security relations and multilateral approaches to threats and challenges. Project results: EU-GRASP is aimed at studying the role of the EU as a global-regional actor in security and peace. This remit implies research that is committed to studying not only the present role of the EU in a multilateral environment, but which also inquires into the EU's anticipated role in the emerging global order. Attempting such a study enumerated above presents, at the best of times, a multi-layered challenge to a researcher. It is even more so in the environment of challenged multilateralism in which the EU currently finds itself. Not only is the topic somewhat intractable in its various and varied dimensions, but also, undertaking such a research is fraught with such pedagogic challenges such as what is the best entry point, what methodological strategies should be adopted, and, more importantly, how best to present the findings. At the preliminary stage, we undertook an assessment and refinement of concepts that would be used in the course of the project and which are relevant to study and understand the role of the EU as an actor in peace and security. This inceptional endeavour focused principally on clarifying theories of security, especially those relating to the so-called non-traditional security studies, in order to link such theories to empirical research. Additionally, our rudimentary research also focused on the concept of security governance and its applicability to EU's practice. In the final analysis, these two research components were brought together with the aim of bridging the existing gap between the literature on security theory and those on security governance, using the results deriving therefrom to interrogate the EU as a global-regional actor in peace and security. The central argument of the first conceptual research is that there is need to develop a specific theoretical framework for analysing the EU as a peace and security actor. Whilst the EU / European security governance literature certainly provides a flexible analytical prism for this purpose, it falls short, in our view, of the optimal analytical tool in that its application is limited to the conceptual notion of security and therefore remains pre-theoretical. We propose that it is by utilising the security studies literature that we can provide a flexible framework and a comparative methodology, which transcends the traditional notion of security - a notion that is essentially defined in terms of threats to states. This suggested approach, in turn, would engender a more sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of how the EU does and speaks security. The second major theme we investigated concerns the levels of transversal cooperation the EU is involved in (bilateral, regional, interregional and global). The mapping of bilateral cooperation focused on EU's interaction with some specific states including the US, Russia, China, Japan, Israel, etc. Similarly, the mapping of interregional relations offered an overview of the current cooperation with Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean. With regard to cooperation at the global level we focused mainly on the relation between the EU and the UN, taking into cognisance other multilateral frameworks that have a global reach. Finally the mapping of the EU as a regional actor highlights the EU's institutional and policy outputs through an investigation of its coherence and its current level of accountability and legitimacy. The deepening of theoretical and conceptual knowledge about the various issues elucidated above, inspired a more robust and comprehensive research of the 23 case studies in the 6 security issues selected by EU-GRASP. The landscape of security studies is over the last years completely changed by the debate between traditional and non-traditional security issues. EU-GRASP takes stock of this and includes the in-depth study of six security issues: regional conflict, terrorism, WMD proliferation, energy security and climate change, severe human rights violations and migration. Against the background of its analytical work and the results of the case studies and transversal reports, EU-GRASP has designed a foresight exercise. The foresight exercise was divided into three phases. The first concerned the identification of key variables likely to affect the future multilateral security governance on the basis of a questionnaire to experts and scholars involved in EU-GRASP. The second phase consisted of a participatory workshop with scholars and practitioners aimed at identifying future scenarios or images of the future. Finally, the third phase included a second participatory workshop, this time involving a larger number of EU policy makers, aiming at identifying security and policy implications for each scenario. Potential impact: The project resulted in the organisation of 23 events and 134 publications. Amongst the latter, the publication of 12 policy briefs, 30 working papers, 6 (forthcoming) books, and 27 (forthcoming) peer-reviewed journal articles and 59 (forthcoming) book chapters and other papers. The project website (please seehttp://www.eugrasp.eu online) contains also some short videos with more details about the project. Policy impact: forming opinions / attitudes EU-GRASP proposed to focus on policy-oriented research and therefore was a highly interactive project. Its approach was rather traditional, in the sense that only in the final stage of the project the interactive approach was really achieved when WP 6 on scenario building and foresight started. Interaction with the policy community is key for the success of this project, given that EU-GRASP wants to assure that its findings will be relevant for EU's decision-making and role in multilateral security governance, pertinent to the EU officials' daily work objectives, to Member States' agendas and at best, critical for the development of EU's strategy to become a relevant world player in security governance, an effective supporter of multilateralism, a competitive partner in bilateral relations in the growingly multipolar international system. Through the scientific coordination of the Forum on the Problems of Peace and War and the UN Institute for Comparative Regional Integration Studies, the first participatory workshop was held on 5-6 October 2011 and the second one on 24 January 2012, both in Brussels. Participants included a sub-group of scholars and policy makers. At several occasions, EU-GRASP researchers participated in policy seminars organised by EU institutions: - Luk Van Langenhove represented EU-GRASP on 27 April 2009 in Brussels at a transatlantic seminar organised by the European Commission (EC) on 'The EU and the US in a changing multipolar system: Transatlantic convergences and divergences' workshop jointly convened by Directorate General (DG) for Research and Directorate, General for External Relations. - Francis Baert was invited by the EC to represent GARNET and EU-GRASP during a closed conference on 'Europe in the world' on 20-21 April 2009 in Brussels. Francis gave a presentation on the securitisation of EU climate change policy. - Luk Van Langenhove was invited by the EUISS to attend the EUISS Annual Conference, 22 - 23 October 2009 in Paris based on preparatory working group discussions. Luk Van Langenhove participated in the working group 4 discussion on global governance on 12 October in Paris. - Francis Baert was invited by the EC and the EUISS to represent EU-GRASP during a transatlantic seminar on November in Washington DC on 19-20 November 2009. - Luk Van Langenhove participated as speaker and Jan Wouters as moderator and both were invited to represent EU-GRASP during a transatlantic seminar in Brussels on 25-26 January 2010. A summary of discussion was published by the EC as: Erik Jones and Angela Liberatore (editors), 'Mapping the future of EU-US partnership', Luxembourg: EC. EUISS in Paris invited several EU-GRASP members to attend brain storm meetings and workshops in Paris. As a token of continuous good relations between EU-GRASP coordinator UNU-CRIS, EUISS (and its director and EU-GRASP advisory board member Alvaro de Vasconcelos) and DG Research, an event was organised in Brussels on 1 October 2010 on 'Civil society's role in global governance'. Dissemination and / or exploitation of project results, and management of intellectual property The events of the Arab Spring in 2011 have shown that new communication tools such as social media and blogs play a vital role within social communities and civil society. This way they allow us to reach an audience which is unthinkable through conventional channels. Neglecting these new media channels is denying the way people are communicating today. Internet is one of these new communication channels. While this medium used to be a place where people could find information, today it has transformed into a place where everyone is becoming the author. This has implications for the way people interact with each other. That is to say, top-down communication is losing a lot of its credibility. Instead people tend to have more faith in their peers and word of mouth, which has been strengthened and extended by the rise of social media. A trend which Kotler et al. also refer to as horizontal communication. Thus, the future of communication will be increasingly bottom up. Content will not only be submitted but also rated and discussed. Therefore a paradigm shift from the traditional media to the electronic dialogue (i.e. RSS and weblogs) is taking place. Although there is a paradigm shift, it is important to note that these new media have not replaced the old ones. The communication environments people are living in have just become more individualised, and are integrating the different communication technologies. However, this also presents a big challenge: people will be confronted to an abundance of information. In order to overcome this, the project has consistently chosen to make the website of EU-GRASP (please seehttp://www.eugrasp.eu online) its central communication tool. This website, with an easy web address in order to improve search results and the generation of traffic to the website, became during its lifetime also increasingly an interactive platform for the project by introducing social media applications