The European Union (EU) has been confronted with a variety of security challenges in recent years. These include not only violent regional conflicts, failed states, international terrorism or the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) but also energy security and organised crime. In response, the EU has strengthened its profile in foreign and security policy significantly during the last decades. Increasingly, the EU as a foreign policy actor engages actively in various security issues through military, economic and diplomatic measures. In other words, the EU acts has firmly established itself as a security actor.

Our panel examines different fields of security the EU is engaged in, ranging from stabilisation through association, EU-enlargement and interregional cooperation to conflict and crisis management and meditation. Drawing on a variety of different theories and methods, the papers on this panel examine the EU’s collaboration with the United Nations, the EU’s role as a mediator and the EU’s stabilisation and association processes and contribute to the debate on how best to conceptualize of the EU as an actor in international affairs.