The EU Crisis Management (original) (raw)

CSDP Missions and Operations Policy Department for External Relations Directorate General for External Policies of the Union

This policy brief provides an overview of what the EU has done through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations since 2003, and which achievements and challenges it faces at the end of EU High Representative/Vice-President (HR/VP) Federica Mogherini's mandate. It evaluates how the overall political context and the EU's approach have evolved over time, and how this has affected the launch and implementation of CSDP actions. It looks at a range of criteria for evaluating the success of missions and operations such as effectiveness, degree of match between mission launch and EU interests at stake, responsiveness, coherence with wider policy strategies, coherence with values and norms, and degree of democratic scrutiny and oversight. It assesses some of the achievements as well as shortcomings of previous and ongoing missions and operations against these objectives. The brief identifies three underlying and cross-cutting problems hampering performance: (i) incompatible attitudes among Member States towards the use of force; (ii) resource disincentives and barriers to timely European solidarity; and (iii) gaps between early warning and early action. It outlines some selected initiatives launched and options discussed to address these shortcomings and improve the EU's performance in crisis management operations.

Supporting European security and defence with existing EU measures and procedures

2015

Focusing on the support of non-CSDP policies for CSDP measures, both in the field of crisis management and defence, this study submits that CSDP cannot effectively contribute to EU external action by itself, but only in coherence with other EU policies and instruments. The study focuses on nine different issue areas of the EU which are of particular interest in the context of CSDP: European Neighbourhood Policy, development cooperation, internal policies and financing instruments in the context of the EU’s international crisis management, as well as innovation policies, industrial policies, regional policy, trade policy and space policy in the context of the EU’s defence policy. The study builds on existing evidence of synergising effects of CSDP and other non-CSDP policies and points to the potential impact which the closer interplay of CSDP and non-CSDP policies could have. Focusing on policy adaptation as well as institutional cooperation of EU actors in each of the policy relati...

CSDP and the open method of coordination: Developing the EU's comprehensive approach to security

Journal of Regional Security

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) - agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 - offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU's comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and 'open' types of EU foreign and security policy ...

CSDP - View from the Member States: Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom

This contribution was prepared for the workshop of the UACES "CSDP STRATEGY" Network, which took place at the University of Surrey on February 1st, 2013. The note presents the early findings of a collaborative research project launched in the Summer 2012 and co-ordinated by the COST (European Co-operation in Science and Technology) Action IS0805 “New Challenges of Peacekeeping and the European Union’s Role in Multilateral Crisis Management”: http://www.peacekeeping-cost-is0805.eu/. Drawing from co-ordinated fieldwork research in Madrid and Paris (Manuel Muniz), Rome and London (Giovanni Faleg), this note analyzes the CSDP from the Spanish, French, Italian and British national interest perspectives. It accounts for the key elements of the four countries’ national interests and how they are crisscrossed with security co-operation at the CSDP level. The empirical findings provide new and important insights on the evolution of strategic interests and culture over the past 20 years, namely as far as the integration of civilian and military tools for crisis management missions and capacity building through pooling & sharing are concerned. The methodology is based on semi-structured interviews with security stakeholders as well as on the review and content analysis of relevant secondary sources and material available.

The EU’s strategic approach to CSDP interventions: Building a tenet from praxis

FIIA Analysis , 2021

Crisis management forms an integral part of the expanding toolbox with which the European Union (EU) reacts to external crises. This FIIA analysis aims at understanding the strategic approach of the EU to crisis management as it develops from the interplay between growing institutional infrastructure and member states’ reactions to crises and conflicts in their neighbourhood. In particular, this analysis investigates the creation of objectives for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) interventions. Drawing on a series of expert interviews, the article challenges a tradition in European studies of analysing EU strategy based on strategic documents alone. Instead, it explores the strategic approach as it has been developed, practised and interpreted by practitioners working in the CSDP framework. The research argues that the development of the EU’s approach is characterized by experimentalism and emergence, which are enabled by repetitive processes of intergovernmentalism and institutional learning in the framework. At the same time, discrepancies in the Integrated Approach and decision- making are found to limit the capabilities of the EU as a strategic actor. Finally, three trends are argued to curtail the EU approach to crisis management at present: a decreasing level of ambition, squeezing between other instruments for foreign and security policy, and a rhetorical shift from external to internal security.

Towards European Strategic Autonomy? Evaluating the New CSDP Initiatives

Towards European Strategic Autonomy? 3 As a result of the deteriorating security environment of Europe, the debate about deepening defence cooperation in the EU has intensified in the past two years. The initiatives reflecting the EU's recent efforts to boost cooperation are reflected by such old and new initiatives among others as the EU Global Strategy, PESCO, CARD or the European Defence Fund. As the paper argues, taken together and implemented properly, these initiatives jointly could provide the basis for establishing the European strategic autonomy, the ability to undertake major high-end military operations in Europe's vicinity. However, since reaching unanimity on many of the crucial questions seem far-fetched, flexibility is indispensable in establishing the proper political and institutional arrangements of the new frameworks of European defence cooperation. Fragmentation of the European Union is already a reality in many aspects, and will remain so also in the area of defence. Therefore, 'fragmentation by design' is more preferable than 'fragmentation by default'. The intensive debates about the initiatives also understate that national considerations and common European interests are often difficult to fully align, however, muddling through on the current path pose significant risks for all EU members and European security as a whole.