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The paper argues for exploring the functionality of the EU in small states’ comprehensive security strategies. Institutions and states today frequently publish security ‘strategies’ defining their overarching aims and policy principles. For small states, membership of regional institutions can be a strategic aim—easing multiple security concerns—but itself tends to modify strategic agendas and discourse. The paper argues that the EU offers small European states soft security strategic options not previously available nor (currently) paralleled elsewhere; and that small states can and do make use of this broader ‘shelter’, albeit at a certain cost. It calls for an update of the small states literature by focusing on the importance of existential and ‘soft’ security benefits increasingly offered by multilateral institutions like the EU.
