Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

GRASP aims to contribute to the analysis and articulation of the current and future role of the EU as a global and regional actor in multilateral security governance, in a context of challenged multilateralism, where the EU aims for effective multilateralism. This project will examine the notion and practice of multilateralism in order to provide the required theoretical background for assessing the linkages between the EU's current security activities with multi-polarism, international law, regional integration processes and the United Nations system.

The project's work plan will consist 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 to human rights);
- a transversal comparative analysis applying and integrating the case study findings; and lastly,
- a foresight study, building off the project's findings that will detail scenarios for future EU policy towards external security relations and multilateral approaches to threats and challenges.

The research will be policy-oriented and include a strong interactive dimension, in order to assure ongoing feedback from the target-public. The work will be undertaken by a consortium of European research centers that have already collaborated on these issues (FP6). This group is enlarged by the inclusion of a number of institutes from outside the EU (Israel, Canada, South Africa and China) that will bring in further expertise on specific security issues in addition to important regional perceptions, necessary to avoiding a narrow Euro-centric approach and enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the EU on the global stage.