The extent to which political and security challenges emanating from the EU’s outer periphery have tested the Union’s ability to act in a comprehensive and integrated fashion has raised questions about the alleged nexus between the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the CFSP. Does such a nexus exist at all or is the ENP mere CFSP in disguise? This chapter revisits the supposedly unique features of the ENP at constitutional, institutional and instrumental levels. It argues that the ENP is still ill-conceived and badly equipped to deal with an unstable environment and the zero-sum gaming neighbours of the EU’s neighbours. Crisis response and conflict management fall outside the realm of the ENP and where a nexus with the CFSP/CSDP might have been presumed it has not materialized.

This book identified the wide range of substantive, institutional, and procedural links that bring together the legal and policy aspects of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Having unpacked the development of the practice of CFSP and the Common Security and Defence Policy (including civilian missions, military operations, capabilities, and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction), the book then conceptualized the way in which these interact with other external policies in the fields of energy, sanctions, trade, development cooperation, humanitarian aid, health security, and cybersecurity, as well as the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, and the European Neighbourhood Policy. This is multi-layered and fast-moving policy of a broad scope and a dynamic legal framework. The analysis, then, stepped back and examined CFSP against a broader conceptual canvas, reflecting on the type of actor that the EU has become, the third parties, expectations of its actorness, and the role of law and ethics in the development of the policy.

Changes in Europe’s wider security environment have forced EU–NATO relations to evolve from a largely lethargic partnership to a more ‘essential’ one. While the bureaucracies of the two Brussels-based organizations have inched closer since the 2016 Joint Declaration in Warsaw, many obstacles need to be cleared before the potential of the new collaborative framework can be more fully exploited. The challenges emanating from the east and the south can be seen as an opportunity for wider and deeper cooperation, yet the rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism in the world, and especially within the organizations’ member states, poses a great challenge. It is argued that a joint response must be formulated in the form of a common strategy, implemented in an integrated way by using a more comprehensive toolbox.