Assessing the EU’s Performance in the Field of Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Abstract

Already more than a decade after the adoption by the European Council of the first EU ‘Strategy against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)’ in December 2003, this edited volume has aimed to take stock of developments and provide an assessment of the EU activities in the field. Undoubtedly, this is more easily said than done, and the methodological and empirical challenges we have faced are numerous, not least because the Strategy touches upon and brings together different policy streams and interactions at both bilateral and multilateral levels. The empirical objective of this concluding chapter is to bring together these insights and provide a broader evaluation of the Strategy in reflection of its holistic nature. In doing so, this chapter also sets to evaluate the applied analytical framework in terms of appropriateness and parsimony.