The article analyses resilience as a new category of the EU's external activities. The author reviews its genesis on the basis of the EEC / EU's documents since 1980s until present. Theoretical works on resilience as well as the practice of the EEC / EU's external relations are examined as factors which have structured the development of resilience in the EU. These factors allow identifying three kinds of contradiction: resilience and securitization (resources and their risks), dialectics of stability / resistance and adaptation / change (with relevant stratification) and resilience as (non)interference in domestic affairs of partners. In the concusion the author reviews the institutional modalities that support resilience in the EU's external activities.