EU operations and missions are established by the Council of the EU – acting by unanimity and following crisis management procedures that were reviewed in 2013.
The Council formally adopts two decisions. The first one ‘establishes’ the operation on the basis of the Crisis Management Concept (elaborated by the Crisis Manage-ment Planning Directorate, CMPD). This decision marks the beginning of the oper-ational planning phase as follows:
- identification of an Operation Headquarters (OHQ) and appointment of an Operation Commander, for military operations;
- the Head of the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC) takes over as Civilian Operation Commander and a selection and appointment process is undertaken for the Head of Mission, for civilian missions;
- elaboration of the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and Operation Plan (OPLAN) by OHQ and CPCC respectively;
- beginning of the formal force generation process.
CSDP in action – what contribution to international security?
Once planning and force generation are completed, the Council formally ‘launches’
the operation through a second decision. Operations and missions are placed under the ‘political control and strategic direction’ of the Political and Security Commit-tee (PSC), which is a defining feature of CSDP activities.
The 2013 crisis management procedures have introduced a ‘fast-track’ process that allows for a shorter planning phase (through a single planning document) if circum-stances require a rapid reaction. Such fast-tracking has been used in the planning of EUFOR RCA. A planning exercise – the Political Framework for Crisis Approach (PFCA) – was also designed to allow for a broad political assessment of the situation and of the appropriateness of a CSDP operation.2 As of May 2015, PFCAs have been drafted in four cases: Ukraine, CAR (prior to the creation of EUMAM RCA), Libya, and Boko Haram.
Together with the ‘normal’ and ‘fast-track’ procedures, a third type of planning and conduct of CSDP operations is defined in Article 44 of the Lisbon Treaty, by which the Council may ‘entrust the implementation of a task to a group of Member States which are willing and have the necessary capability for such a task’. An Article 44 op-eration – yet to be implemented – would still be created by the Council acting unan-imously, but the participating member states would retain responsibility for the planning and command of the operation. In essence, Article 44 is about granting greater flexibility and speeding up reaction time. It aims to facilitate the deployment of CSDP operations by creating a framework which allows willing member states to go ahead with an operation as efficiently and effectively as possible.
In legal terms, CSDP operations and missions are established on the basis of a com-bination of a Council decision and either an invitation by the host state or a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
In practice, all civilian missions (with the exception of EULEX Kosovo) have been established on the basis of an invitation of the recipient state. Military operations, for their part, fall into two categories: some were created on the basis of a Chapter VII UNSC resolution (Althea in Bosnia, Atalanta in the Gulf of Aden, EUFOR RCA, as well as in the past the two operations in the DRC [2003 and 2006] or the one launched in Chad [2008-09]); others were created on the basis of an invitation (EU-TMs Mali and Somalia, EUMAM RCA).
Quite a few of the latter, as well as some civilian missions, are still referred to in UNSC resolutions. Such reference provides a degree of legitimacy to the EU endeav-our. It also helps in future coordination with other international and local actors as various EU entities can draw on the UNSC text to justify their presence. In all cases the host government has consented to the EU deployment.
2. Based on shared analysis (bringing together the EEAS and the Commission), a PFCA sets ‘the political context [of the crisis], articulating what the crisis is, why the EU should act (based on the EU’s interests, objectives, and values) and what instruments could be available, and best suited, for that action’. See EEAS, ‘Suggestions for crisis management procedures for CSDP crisis management operations’, June 2013.
ian missions are funded by the CFSP budget, as well as by member states through personnel seconded to the missions. In 2014, the committed budget for the ten on-going civilian missions amounted to €273 million for a total CFSP budget of €314 million. The Council’s decision establishing a mission also sets its budget for a giv-en period. As an example, the budget of the largest mission – EULEX Kosovo – from June 2013 to June 2014 was €110 million; that of one of the smallest – EUBAM Rafah – from July 2013 to June 2014 was €940,000.
In the military domain, Treaty provisions prohibit ‘expenditure arising from op-erations having military or defence implications” (art.41.2) being charged to the Union budget. As a consequence, military operations are financed by participating states that cover their own expenses (according to the ‘costs lie where they fall’ rule).
Only some ‘common costs’ are shared and covered by the Athena mechanism which is made up of contributions from member states (except Denmark) in accordance with a GNP scale. It is often assumed that these common costs represent between 10 and 15 percent of the total cost of an operation, but this has never been substanti-ated by any thorough analysis, and the figure is likely to be inaccurate in most cases.
The Athena budget for 2014 was approximately €78 million for the five military operations.
The financing mode of military operations makes it impossible to assess their over-all budget. Practicover-ally, the only way to assess the cost of EU military operations would be to add up the common costs and the expenses of all participating nations, when available. Yet these figures are not systematically accessible and expenses may not be calculated consistently from one country to the other.
Discussions on new sources or mechanisms of funding for both military and civil-ian operations have been ongoing over the last two years, notably on the occasion of the review of the Athena decision, but also in the context of the ‘Train and Equip’
programme.3 Debates have revolved around two different sets of issues: one linked to the availability of financial resources for CSDP operations and missions and bet-ter burden-sharing of the costs of military operations; the other is focused on the extent to which EU money – possibly development funds – could be used to finance activities peripheral to CSDP operations, such as equipping forces trained by the EU. Both levels are highly sensitive, in part because they affect member states’ con-tributions and, in part because they may lead to a new interpretation of what the EU (Commission-run) budget may fund.
3. In the case of Athena, the newly-adopted Council decision includes a provision that regulates the administrative management of third party financial contributions – including from the Union – by Athena (Council Decision, 2015/528, 27 March 2015, art. 30). In the case of ‘Train and Equip’, the High Representative and the Commission have released a Joint Communication on ‘Capacity-building in support of security and development – Enabling partners to prevent and manage crises’ that makes recommendations to facilitate the use of EU financial instruments to build the capacity (in the military domain in particular) of third states (JOIN(2015) 17 final, Brussels, 28 April 2015).
CSDP in action – what contribution to international security?