Today, as before, the maritime domain is vital to keep the European economy going. The length and breadth of this dynamic maritime environment, when coupled with the competing priorities of member states and coordination with non-member states, makes the maritime security challenges (and opportunities) very important for the future of the European Union (EU). In order to cope with this issue in June 2014 the European Union made progress towards an integrated response to maritime security challenges by adopting the EU Maritime Security Strategy (EUMSS). Since the declaration of its Strategy, the EU has loudly proclaimed itself to be a global player in maritime security, but the reality is fairly different. This becomes clearer when, for instance, the EU has to struggle to balance the myriad regional maritime issues with international maritime issues, showing that a unified maritime strategy for the global maritime domain is still far off. To follow up on this debate we will try to scrutinize, as the paper’s title suggests, on a very important question: does the EU have a global dimension in what concerns its maritime strategy? Is it really “connected by sea”?
Keywords: EU Maritime Security Strategy; Global Strategy
Cristiano Cabrita (cjpcabrita@yahoo.com)
CLIPIS – Centro Lusíada de Investigação em Política Internacional e de Segurança