Assessing the conflict resolution potential of the EU: The Cyprus Conflict and Accession Negotiations (2005) Security Dialogue (original) (raw)
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Security Dialogue, 2005
This article treats conflict prevention and conflict transformation as foreign policy tools that are available to international actors alongside classical security-based foreign policy measures. It investigates the conflict resolution role of the EU on the Cyprus conflict in the context of EU accession negotiations. For this purpose, the article: (a) depicts the changes in the roles the EU has played on the island within the context of the accession negotiations; (b) illustrates the nature of structural prevention measures that the EU has taken; and (c) describes the consequences of the EU involvement on UN-led negotiation efforts. The results suggest that the EU has treated the enlargement process as a structural prevention mechanism to change the incentive systems of the conflicting parties-neglecting the conflict-transformation aspects of foreign policymaking. Thus far, this has produced inefficient policies and resulted in the EU bringing an aged conflict into its own jurisdiction. Vision-building, capacity-building, and synergy-building are the three strategies that may help the EU to expand its foreign policy toolbox and to become an influential player in world politics.
Protracted Stalemates and Conflict Intervention: Policy(Un)Learning and the Cyprus–EU Debacle
Ethnopolitics, 2012
The article examines why a comprehensive settlement to resolve the Cyprus problem has yet to be reached despite the existence of a positive incentive structure and the proactive involvement of regional and international organizations, including the European Union and the United Nations. To address this question, we draw evidence from critical turning points in foreign policy decision-making in Turkey, Greece and the two communities in Cyprus. We emphasize the role of hegemonic political discourses arguing that the latter have prevented an accurate evaluation of incentives that could have set the stage for a constructive settlement. However, despite the political debacle, success stories have emerged, such as the reactivation of the Committee for Missing Persons (CMP), a defunct body for almost 25 years, to become the most successful bi-communal project following Cyprus' EU accession. We evaluate contradictory evidence in the Cypriot peace process and identify policy lessons to be learned from the CMP 'success story'.
Conflict Resolution in the European Neighbourhood: The Role of the EU as a Framework and as an Actor
EUI-RSCAS Working Papers, No. 2004/29, 2004
The European Union's neighbourhood is rife with secessionist conflicts. The Union's proximity and its magnetic power of attraction has created the potential for a constructive European involvement in these regions. An EU role can be two-fold. First, the EU framework of governance, law and policy can offer a conducive context for the settlement of ethno-political conflicts. Second, the Union can act in its neighbouring regions to generate incentives for the settlement and ultimate resolution of conflict. But to what extent can the Union export its forms of governance in a manner that can contribute to the amelioration and resolution of conflict? What instead are the mechanisms and their limits through which EU actions or inactions could alter the incentive structure underpinning conflict? This article attempts to shed light on the above questions.
International Negotiation, 2002
This article provides a game theoretic analysis of how the candidacy of Cyprus for European Union (EU) membership presents an important challenge for both the Union's eastern enlargement plans and current international efforts aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem. The conclusions indicate that the Cypriot conflict has entered a very delicate period in its protracted and troublesome history characterized by a deadlock game. Strong domestic and international factors have created the conditions for each side to follow a non-cooperative strategy aimed at unilateral victory rather than a compromise. In this regard, the EU's promise to the Greek Cypriots of membership in the Union, regardless of the settlement of the Cyprus problem, serves as a side payment that enforces non-cooperative strategy. Likewise, Turkey's overwhelming military superiority in the region and its unconditional support for the Turkish Cypriots strengthens the Turkish side's rigid position in the Cyprus negotiations. Under these circumstances, it is argued that an influential third party like the United States is needed to coordinate the efforts of the UN and EU to move the two parties away form a deadlock game. This effort requires a package approach to the issues surrounding the Cyprus problem, the island's membership in the EU, and EU-Turkey relations.
Comparing the EU’s Role in Neighbourhood Conflicts
in Marise Cremona (ed.). Developments in EU External Relations Law. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008
This chapter assesses the EU's impact and effectiveness in promoting peacemaking in its neighbourhood through its contractual relations with conflict parties. It does so by focusing on five conflicts in the European neighbourhood: the conflicts in Cyprus, Turkey (and the Kurds), Serbia and Montenegro, Israel-Palestine, and Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). It establishes three ‘channels of influence’ through which, in the context of contractual relations, the EU may impact on these neighbourhood conflicts. The first is conditionality (both positive and negative); the second is social learning; and the third channel of influence is termed passive enforcement. It is argued that the process of experiential learning which passive enforcement implies gives rise to a subtler process of influence and change than conditionality, and may be perceived as less of an external imposition, embedded as it is in legal commitments voluntarily undertaken.
Conflict Working Paper Series No.1, 2007
The role of the European Union as a catalyst for conflict transformation and resolution has become a major area of interest for scholars in recent years. However, the catalytic effect, while accepted as a real phenomenon, is nevertheless rather nebulous and ill-defined. As a result, efforts are now being made to define the precise nature of the catalytic effect, examine its limitations and explore the ways in which it can be strengthened. One approach to enhance its effect is to try to incorporate some form of conditionality into the process. In order to explore this idea more fully, this article examines the case of Cyprus, which is a prominent recent example of the way in which the EU can help to create the conditions conflict resolution. But while Cyprus highlights that strength of the catalytic effect, it also provided a graphic illustration of the multitude of difficulties associated with trying to enhance the effect by formally incorporating an element of associated conditionality into the process.