As an EU maritime specialist, CASS Project Leader Basil Germond was invited to contribute to the panel on the future of NATO in counter-piracy and counter-terrorism by discussing the EU’s experience and what lessons NATO can learn from the Union. Basil’s talk stressed the different levels of readings when it comes to interpreting the narrative behind the EU’s decision to launch a counter-piracy operation at the Horn of Africa (Operation Atalanta, launched in 2008 and still ongoing): the EU as a security provider to the world (contribution to international security, i.e. protection of the sea lanes of communication), the EU as a security provider to its member states (contribution the member states’ security, i.e. protecting their maritime trade), and the EU as a geopolitical actor (normalization of security operations beyond the EU’s external boundaries).

The seminar took place at the University of Birmingham on Friday 20 September 2013. The audience was drawn from academia, government officials, the military and NGOs. It was an opportunity for Basil to discuss issues of representation (of maritime threats) in NATO’s discourses with naval practitioners and get some informal feedback on corpus methodologies.

For further information, please refer to Basil’s latest article: Basil Germond (2013), “The European Union at the Horn of Africa: the contribution of critical geopolitics to piracy studies”, Global Policy, 4/1, pp.80-5.