The EUs Maritime Security Strategy: the limits of neo-medieval soft security?

The EUs Maritime Security Strategy: the lim-its of neo-medieval soft security? This paper offers a critical interpretation of the EUs recent Maritime Security Strategy (MSS), released in June 2014 and followed up by an action plan in December 2014. It does so employing the EU as neo-medieval empire approach (Bull, 1977, p.254-255; Rennger, 2000, Zielonka, 2006). Crucially, this perspec-tive makes the distinction between strategy made by states as against that by a hybrid suzerain entity such as the EU. Equally however, the EU MSS is more than the sum of a few member states maritime con-cerns. In particular, this paper explains EU Maritime strategy discourse as originating from institutional competition between the Council and the Commission, and their relative bureaucratic entrepreneurship within a global market for soft security. The key objective of EU maritime strategy is then revealed to be the stability and encouragement of globalised maritime trade flows, but using classic instruments of soft security. While replete with great possibilities, it is argued that the EUs maritime security strategy is like-ly to be weak, incoherent, and far from a replacement for the ongoing salience of influential national gov-ernments and certain private actors, as the key providers of maritime security.