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The EU and the Security-Development Nexus: Bridging the Legal Divide

The need to enhance the coherence of EU security and development policies is stressed in numerous EU policy declarations. This article analyses this commitment against the background of the legal architecture of EU foreign policy. This demonstrates that the political simplicity with which this commitment is often put forward tends to hide the complexity of this undertaking in an external action system that submits the policy fields of development cooperation and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to different rules and procedures. While the EU institutions have increasingly targeted development and security policies at the mutual challenges of insecurity and poverty, the lack of a shared and comprehensive strategy leads to significant improvisation. On the one hand, the ad hoc replies to this commitment have resulted in the development of a particularly fragmented EU toolbox to deal with these challenges. On the other hand, this raises important questions regarding the choice of appropriate legal bases for the various policy initiatives that span the security-development nexus. It is argued that the Lisbon Treaty, by interlinking the CFSP and development cooperation both constitutionally and institutionally, creates significant opportunities that, combined with the necessary political will, allow the EU to move beyond its ad hoc approach.