Abstract
Focusing on fragile Georgia since the early 2000s, the article takes a country-centred perspective on EU–NATO inter-organisationalism. It outlines the regional strategies of these core Western security institutions and assesses their complementarity and overlap across three sets of tasks: defence and empowerment, crisis management, and security sector reform. While there is hardly functional overlap in the first and second sets, in the third the EU and NATO intersect to a considerable degree. Also, there is no significant inter-organisational cooperation over Georgia. One key conclusion is that while field-level overlap clearly jeopardises institutional effectiveness, overlapping toolboxes – as in crisis management – allow for institutional flexibility when one international organisation setting offers reputational or practical advantages. Against this backdrop, a case can be made contra propositions of merging the Common Security and Defence Policy and NATO.