(Re)Building The European Union`S International Role Through Human Security Strategy In The Aftremaths Of The European Crisis

In a globalized world, characterized by profound shifts in the dynamics of global power and by diverse threats to peace and security, the European Union should be an active and peace-promoter actor, according to its founding principles. Thus, the European crisis left hard to heal scars within the European Union internal coherence and for its international role and image. The European crisis determined a cleavage in foreign and defence policy between the EU`s member states, creating dissonances in its internal processes. Therefore, this incongruence determined flawed reactions to international events. In order to determine the impact of the European crisis on the EU`s international role, it is briefly analysed the EU`s and its member states reactions to the conflicts from Libya and Syria. The main hypothesis of this article is that in order to overcome the effects of the economic crisis and to rebuild its international trust, the EU should reaffirm its core principles through a coherent external policy, which should be embedded in a bottom-up legitimized paradigm. This analysis demonstrates that human security strategy and the responsibility to protect principle can become the new European meta-narrative, the fact that they have the potential to overcome the current gap between rhetoric and practice in foreign and defence European policies. Therefore, this article advocates that the human security strategy and the responsibility to protect principle represent an impetus to transform the EU in an important global actor.