New ‘EU foreign policy’ capabilities have been forged against the background of on-going international and EU-internal debates on the complex relationship between development and security. However, in the EU context, the security-development nexus is further complicated by the fact that its elements stretch over different ‘pillars’ of the EU’s internal organization involving different legal approaches and actors. This element of the project on European policy for global development analyses how specific actors have changed their role(s) in EU external relations and what the implications are on coherence of EU policy and the coordination between actors at the level of the Union and member states.
As one of the central objectives of the study is to assess the scope of coordination problems and challenges to internal coherence within this particular policy tool, there are clear links of the project to development policy effectiveness (see PCD). Furthermore, by examining the security-development nexus, this particular strand of the EU beacon project emphasizes the goal dimension of the international development policy effectiveness agenda.