Disasters, Diseases, Disruptions
A New D-drive for the EU
Description:... The European Security Strategy (ESS) issued by the EU in December 2003 devoted its first chapter to what it called ‘global challenges’. Most of those challenges –poverty, infectious disease, drought and famine, violent conflict – affect the Europe of today only indirectly and/or moderately, although they certainly had a much more direct impact in previous centuries (including the last one). By contrast, some of them – global warming, infrastructural disruptions, migration flows – may affect European societies in a much more dramatic fashion in the future. The main goal of this Chaillot Paper is to try and explore the various issues involved and their (actual and potential) correlations. It dwells upon their root causes and the EU policy record so far, and puts forward a few tentative recommendations on how to move ahead. It does so by resorting to a series of key ‘D words’ that may help situate and conceptualise the different challenges. Its focus, however, is not primarily on Defence, although the military dimension can indeed be part of the picture. Rather, a possible new (or additional) D-Drive for EU security policy should encompass what we generally call Disasters. The contributors have broken them down more specifically as environmental Degradation (Urs Luterbacher), resource Deprivation (Marco Zupi), infectious Disease (Stefan Elbe), and functional Disruption (Bengt Sundelius). This Chaillot Paper, edited and introduced by Antonio Missiroli, aims to provide some rudimentary software to start (up) with. It is also a response to the call for mutual solidarity against ‘natural and man-made disasters’ that was enshrined not only in art. I-43 of the EU Constitutional Treaty, but also in the European Council Declaration released after the terrorist attack of 11 March 2004 in Madrid, both of which commit the member states to engage to that end ‘all the instruments at their disposal, including military resources’.
Show description