European Union Security Research at the SEI

The provision of security - both external and internal - belongs to the traditional core function of states. The European Union's growing role in this domain is therefore one of the politically most difficult and academically most interesting and challenging areas of European integration. In their teaching and research Jörg Monar and Adrian Treacher address a wide range of security issues, from the fight against transnational crime within the EU, to external border security, and the EU's foreign, security and defence policies. With the borderlines between internal and external security becoming increasingly blurred - the fight against international terrorism being a major example - there is a growing and pressing need to understanding the EU's role as a security actor.

The agenda of the "security cluster" of the Sussex European Institute - which also involves other colleagues and PhD students - is pursued through four interrelated and interdisciplinary research themes:

(1) The analysis of the evolving nature of internal and external security challenges and their interrelationship (including "spill-over" effects between internal and external security and the securitisation of fields like illegal immigration);

(2) the evolution of national and EU institutional responses to these challenges (including the impact of national positions on the EU security agenda);

(3) specific trends and problems of EU governance in the security domain (including specific institutional features such as the role of the JHA special agencies or ESDP decision-making structures), and questions surrounding concepts like 'civilian power' and 'normative power').

(4) the strategic priorities and main patterns of action of the EU in cooperation with major international partners (United States, the European Neighbourhood Policy countries, the Russian Federation).

This research agenda is pursued through collaborative projects with a range of international partners including the European University Institute (Florence), the College of Europe (Bruges), the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Paris), the Institute for Political Science of the University of Cologne and the Robert Schuman University (Strasbourg). SEI staff have played an active role regarding the security issues covered by the EU-funded NEWGOV, CONNEX, CONSENT and SECURINT projects.

As part of the research on EU security policies Jörg Monar has been asked to provide advice to a range of national and EU institutions, including the British House of Lords, the German Bundestag, the European Parliament, the French Commissariat Général au Plan, the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy and the German Ministry of Interior. In addition to his work at Sussex, Adrian Treacher has taught on issues surrounding the EU as a global security actor in Poland, Slovenia and Turkey. He recently accepted an invitation to lecture to the UK's Joint Services Command Staff College. The SEI is also one of the two host institutions of the European Foreign Affairs Review (founded in 1996) which regularly covers EU external security issues from the JHA domain to military security aspects. Members of staff regularly participate in international conferences (such as ECPR, EUSA and UACES) and present parts of their work at research centres abroad (recently, for instance, at the universities of Barcelona, Columbia (NY), Georgetown, Munich (CAP), North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Sciences-Po, St.-Petersburg State University and Yale).