ABSTRACT

The 2016 EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) is aimed at adapting the EU’s external action to a more complex and uncertain global scenario. It means a visible “pragmatic turn” and a marked focus in societal resilience and in its neighborhood. This chapter provides a description as well as an interpretation of the EUGS, taking into account its institutional foundations, its material content and its nature as a security narrative; that is, as a discursive device that shapes the identity and values of the EU, as well as the internal–external axis of European security and its external action, thus entailing noticeable normative dilemmas. The chapter concludes that the EUGS contributes to shaping a new security legitimation for an EU that suffers a deep existential crisis.