European Security – Responsibility of Member States in the European Security Union

International Symposium 16-17 June 2022
Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the European Union

Rue Wiertz 77, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium

Facing increasing cross-border threats, the Member States of the European Union are moving closer together in ensuring internal and external security. In this context, the EU Security Union Strategy (COM (2020) 605 final) provides a coherent regulatory framework for numerous concepts, strategies and action programmes relating to security policy. A closer look, however, shows that there are many issues that still require clarification. This is true especially for the significance and scope of Member State sovereignty. The reservation formulated in Article 4 (2) 3rd sentence TEU is considerably vague in normative terms. Following the recent judicature of the European Court of Justice on data retention, it remains unclear, how far the "sole responsibility of the Member States" for their "national security" extends and contradictions between Member States and the European Commission could appear. Against this background, the international symposium under the patronage of the European Parliament will take a closer look at potentials and limits of European security cooperation making the discussion more substantiated and showing more precisely where the limits of both European Union and Member State action are.