This panel addresses the combined challenge of a tumultuous international environment in times of budget cuts and austerity. The central question to be answered is: How can the EU afford a foreign and security that benefits its interests and citizens?

First, Jerzy Dudek (EUI) will elaborate the concept of 'reverse subsidiarity', thus recasting the rationale for European integration from an external relations perspective. The paper takes into account the political science scholarship in order to better understand the nature of integration and analyses provisions on external action added by the Lisbon Treaty and the recent case law to demonstrate what possibilities can be offered by the current legal framework.

Subsequently, Madalina Moraru (EUI) examines the role of Union delegations to third countries in providing protection to EU citizens. Several Member States had to cut down their external representations, while the number of EU citizens travelling abroad is steadily increasing. The EU has acquired a new diplomatic service with a network of 140 delegations operating globally and making the EU better represented externally than most of the Member States. She argues that the newly created EEAS, with its powers of assisting the EU citizens abroad, should be fully taken advantage of by the Member States so as to ensure the needs of all EU citizens while economizing their infrastructural costs.

Following this, Joris Larik (EUI) addresses that challenges posed by spending cuts cuts for the CSDP, which increasingly permeates the discourse on this policy. While at crucial moments, the Union has failed to act, most recently in the Libyan civil war, Britain and France have engaged in bilateral cooperation defence arrangements (the so-called “entente frugale”). Against this backdrop, the CSDP is at a crucial juncture. Either, the Member States simply cannot afford it anymore, or it is harnessed as a catalyst for the Member States to economise and improve its clout at the same time. However, tackling the financial challenge raises numerous legal and institutional issues given the "sovereignty sensitive" nature of defence policy and the intergovernmental design of the CSDP. The present paper maps out these issues and proposes ways to resolve them.

Lastly, Bart van Vooren (University of Copenhagen) reminds us of the Union’s dependence on external energy supply, without which neither its internal market nor its external action can run. Yet, a common EU external energy policy is still largely wanting. Only from 2005-2006 onwards did the creation of a truly common external policy move up the political agenda under the stimulus of the successive energy delivery cessations from Russia and the rapid increase in energy prices. In December 2009 the Lisbon Treaty explicitly conferred a shared competence in the sphere of energy to the EU, alongside other important changes to EU external relations. This paper explores the initiatives which have been taken since December 2009, in order to answer the following question: What were the main pre-Lisbon obstacles to an effective and coherent EU external energy policy, and have they been satisfactorily resolved in exercising the new EU energy competence?