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"This book examines the values and principles that inform EU Foreign Policy, conveying an understanding of the EU as an international actor. This volume explores the implications of these values and principles on the process of the construction of the European Union identity"--Provided by publisher

The past decade has challenged the EU and its international image. The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the Ukraine crisis, the so-called irregular migration crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have all put the EU under severe strain. This article explores if and how the EU's performance in such crises has impacted upon the external image of the EU. The analysis shows that external images have closely followed the EU's actual performance, although filtering it through the powerful lenses of local and regional concerns and sensibilities. While some traditional images have proved to be resilient in the longer run (as in the case of the EU as an economic powerhouse or a frequently divided community), others have been severely weakened by the EU's crisis responses (such as the EU as a bastion of human rights). Our findings contribute to the discussion on the public diplomacy and information strategy of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in shaping locally-resonating positive images of the EU worldwide.
external images of the EU, multiple crises of the EU, EU public diplomacy

This article explains the recursive tendency to develop inimical relations between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia by pointing at the incompatibility of their strategic cultures—here understood as broad cognitive frameworks subsuming an actor's self-perception, worldview, and preferred way to use force. NATO and Russia have defined their roles in world politics, decoded the other's intentions, and undertaken certain practices on the basis of divergent socio-cognitive assumptions. Incompatible strategic cultures bring about clashing grand strategies and generate conflictual relations. The two actors think differently and therefore read and react to a same situation in divergent ways. As a product of socially-embedded dynamics, NATO-Russia enmity cannot be easily overcome - if not in the long term and via sustained interaction. After presenting their theoretical framework, the authors reconstruct NATO's and Russia's strategic cultures, and then discuss the Ukraine crisis as a case study.

For the EU, though, coping with the challenge of migration has a double meaning: first, it implies envisaging solutions to a phenomenon that is here to stay. Second, it entails figuring out which kind of security actor the EU is and is likely to be in the future: will it be an inward- looking entity committed to 'securing' its homeland; or will it consider the security of migrants (and their rights) as equally relevant to the values it upholds and the external image it wants to project? Both objectives are strategic, as they pertain to the future of the EU and the European capability to face core challenges collectively. Hence, this chapter focuses on the key questions framing the contributions to this collection: What is the EU's ambition as a security actor in the migration domain? Is the EU an autonomous security actor vis- à-vis its member states in this domain? Is the EU strategy with respect to migration internally consistent and comprehensive? Does the EU deliver policies consistent with its security rhetoric and, if not, why and with what consequences?

Migration did not figure in the European Security Strategy of 2003. Never mentioned as a threat, it was not even mentioned as a risk. Thirteen years later, migration is widely cited in the new European Union Global Strategy. Much richer than the previous security document and global in aspiration, the Global Strategy treats migration as a challenge and an opportunity, recognising the key role it plays in a rapidly changing security landscape. However, this multi-faceted perspective on migration uncovers starkly different political and normative claims, all of which are legitimate in principle. The different narratives on migration present in the new strategic document attest to the Union's comprehensive approach to the issue but also to critical and possibly competing normative dilemmas.

Recently introduced in the academic and political debate, the concept of "security governance" still needs to be clarified. In particular, to make the concept more useful for an assessment of current security dynamics, four main shortcomings need to be overcome: in the first place, attention has been devoted more to "governance" than to "security", while greater attention should be paid to how security is understood and perceived by the actors involved in the governance system. Second, the literature is divided in two main branches, one looking at security governance predominantly by/through governmental organizations and one dealing with non-state actors: attempts should be made to give sense of coordination efforts (or lack thereof) among different actors and layers of governance, even when focussing attention predominantly on one type of actor (e.g. regional state powers). Third, the literature (with notable exceptions though) has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area: an effort should be made to look at extra-European dynamics, also with an aim to evaluate the relationship between political/security culture and security governance, as well as between political/economic development and security governance. Finally, the literature on security governance has been too often detached from reflections over regionalism, while it would be useful to explore further the relationship between cognitive definitions of regional and security dynamics. This is all the more important when considering the progressive emergence of non-European regional powers, possibly interpreting security challenges in different terms and displaying different likelihoods and modalities to arrange coordination patterns and solve security problems.