Linking and overlap between the EU’s security policies

Policy Study

Study by Dr Christian Deubner, Member of FEPS Scientific Council

This link between internal and external aspects of security policies is present at every stage from the challenges which internal and external security policies face down to the tools –or ‘enablers’– which they apply to master them. This report commences from the hypothesis or point of departure that much of what is new in European security poli­cies is located in the intersection between the two, i.e. the overlap, the interdependen­cies, the inter­actions between internal and external security policy – the ‘external dimension’ of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, in EU-terminology.  

In exploring this hypothesis, the first part of the report aims to present new developments of overlap and operational linking be­tween the two security policies in an innovative and systematic analytical approach. The following second part of the report discusses the relationship between these policies and their links, and the development of EU policy integration.

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The concluding section, which takes up the most important results of the preceding analysis, concerns:

–        the dynamic interdependence of the EU’s external and internal security policies;

–        the development of overlap and operational linking;

–        the rapprochement of the EU’s internal and external security policy; and 

–        the persisting and necessary differences between these two security policies;

–        and the interaction between operational linking and the trend of European integration.