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Sometimes it seems like the European Union needs a crisis, for mindsets to change in times of crisis. Indeed there have been many crises facing EU policymakers, from Russian military aggression in the Eastern Ukraine, Lukashenka’s instrumentalisation of migrants or the chaotic evacuation of Kabul in August 2021. The EU’s performance in each of these cases has evidently challenged the Union’s ambition to assert itself geopolitically. It is also in this context, that prominent voices have repeatedly called the European Union astrategic: an actor lacking an agreed assessment of its external environment and struggles to prioritize shared foreign policy objectives.

 

Chaired by the Centre for Grand Strategy's very own Malin Severin, Julia will draw on her education in the Department of War Studies as well as her experience in the European Parliament, and will challenge the idea of an astrategic European Union. Instead, she will showcase how the discipline of strategic foresight - induced by crises - has catalysed the gradual emergence of a clear European grand-strategic rationale. This rationale finds its latest and most pronounced expression in the drafting of the so-called Strategic Compass, a document that - albeit not ratified yet - is to guide the European Union’s journey towards being a geopolitical heavyweight.

Event details

War Studies Meeting Room, K6.07, King's Building, Strand
King's Building
Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS