As seen in the first chapter, the complexity and multidimensionality of crisis man-agement mean that it is an activity that can only be conducted on a cooperative basis among a multitude of entities. For the EU as much as for most other crisis manage-ment actors, the coordination/cooperation imperative has translated into two par-allel lines of effort: one internal and one external. Internally, the necessity to act in a more strategic manner has led to the development of the so-called comprehensive approach. Externally, its increasing crisis management role has led the EU to work and develop partnerships with a range of other crisis management institutions.
Internal coordination: the comprehensive approach
The EU’s external action takes many different forms, including CSDP operations and missions. The effectiveness and impact of these operations require a certain level of strategic purpose and consistency between the various CSDP components.
The Lisbon Treaty called for enhanced coordination of the EU’s external action, and the creation of the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who is also Vice-President of the Commission (HR/VP) is just one illustration of this imperative. In December 2013, a Joint Communication of the Commission and the HR/VP on the ‘comprehensive approach to external conflicts and crises’ defined the comprehensive approach as an ambition to make the EU’s
‘external action more consistent, more effective and more strategic’ by ‘drawing on the full range of its instruments and resources.’
In practice, the CSDP-level of the comprehensive approach implies increased coor-dination within a CSDP operation as well as between an operation and other EU actors such as member states, the EU Delegation in situ and the Commission. In the case of military operations, the civil-military interaction becomes an important part of the comprehensive approach.
There are two broad aspects of the comprehensive approach: one relates to the ex-istence of a shared strategic vision of the various EU entities involved in a CSDP operation or associated with it; the other relates to the implementation of various aspects of CSDP operations’ mandates in accordance with that shared vision and in a coordinated manner.
The comprehensive approach is an aspiration, a guideline, a process more than an end goal. Political, cultural, administrative, and even personality-related obstacles are likely to remain as inherent limitations to its full implementation. At the three levels of interaction between the civilians and the military, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Commission, and the EU and its member states, dif-ferences in working methods, institutional cultures and degrees of politicisation make coordination a permanent challenge. Also, the extent to which the various EU actors are able to define a shared strategic vision and create incentives for all
improvement.
Despite these structural impediments, progress is visible on different fronts, and EU policy in the CSDP domain is more integrated in 2015 than it probably ever was before.
Recent evolutions, such as the increasing participation of Commission staff in EEAS-led CSDP-related planning and working groups, the socialisation process between military and civilian personnel within the EEAS, the mutual acknowledgement of the interconnection of security and development, the transformation of EC Delegations into EU Delegations, the creation of coordination bodies or processes (Crisis Plat-forms, PFCAs, CSDP Lessons Management Group, etc.), the elaboration of Regional Strategies, have all to some extent contributed to shaping a culture of coordination that is not comparable with what existed twelve years ago, when the first ESDP oper-ations were established. The two cases of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, for which Regional Strategies have been adopted, provide examples of a level of integration of the various layers of the EU presence – CSDP operations and missions; EU Delega-tions; security and development actors – that could have hardly existed a decade ago.
Inter-institutional cooperation
While the comprehensive approach is primarily about EU internal coordination, it also contains an external dimension, i.e. the necessity for the EU to reach out to other crisis management actors as well as to local parties.
Through CSDP operations and missions, the EU has become a member of the re-stricted club of crisis management actors, together with the UN, NATO, the OSCE, or the African Union. This means that it has become an option for its member states’ crisis management policies, but also that it is being seen as a crisis manage-ment actor by the wider international community. One expression of this is the integration of the EU in the crisis management institutional network. Although the EU is not, strictly speaking, a regional arrangement in the sense of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, it has defined from the outset its ambition with reference to the United Nations’ broader responsibility and role. In the meantime, other regional institutions – such as NATO or the AU – but also third states, have progressively become part of the EU’s various circles of interaction.
Twelve of the 16 ongoing CSDP operations are deployed where other international organisations are also present in a crisis management role. Six of the ten military operations carried out since 2003 were sequential with other operations, i.e. they took over existing operations (run by NATO or the UN) or handed over to other international organisations. Ten of the current EU missions operate where there is simultaneously a UN peacekeeping operation or a UN special political mission. In some phases of the evolving situations in Mali or the Central African Republic, the EU was one among three or even four other international organisations or interven-ing states (in a security role). The EU has thus become an actor of the above-men-tioned ‘hybridisation’ of peace operations.
CSDP in action – what contribution to international security?
Arguably this evolution requires to be addressed through an array of policy responses ranging from loose coordination mechanisms to largely-institutionalised partnerships. The most developed partnership is the one with the UN. Since the EU-UN Joint Declaration of September 2003, the two organisations have developed and institutionalised their cooperation in ways unmatched by other organisations. In 2012, an EU ‘Action Plan on CSDP support to UN peacekeeping’ helped revitalise the partnership at a moment when the level of CSDP activity was rather low. The Action Plan defined a series of initiatives to move the relationship forward, with the hope on the UN side that the partnership would also take the form of national European contributions to UN peacekeeping operations (this partly happened with the Netherlands’
and Sweden’s contributions to the UN operation in Mali – respectively 550 and 250 personnel). In 2014-15, the deployment of EUFOR RCA as well as EUCAP Sahel Mali, in both cases in parallel with UN operations, allowed for renewed cooperation between the two institutions. In parallel, a new framework on the ‘UN-EU Strategic Partnership on Peacekeeping and Crisis Management’
covering the period 2015-2018 was being elaborated.
The EU-NATO relationship is less developed, both for political reasons (the so-called ‘participation problem’) and as a result of a lower level of field interaction.
The ‘Berlin Plus’ framework that defines the nature and conditions of NATO support to EU-led military operations is largely outdated. Operation Althea in Bosnia is the only Berlin Plus operation, yet its scheduled termination is likely to also mark the end of the framework. Furthermore, NATO has been absent from Africa where the bulk of CSDP activities takes place. The three theatres where EU-NATO cooperation has been tested in the last five years are Kosovo, Afghani-stan, and the Gulf of Aden. In principle, formal communication between the two institutions is not possible outside of the Berlin Plus framework. In prac-tice though, inter-institutional relations have developed informally to the extent possible, although the Afghan and Gulf of Aden situations have also highlighted competition dynamics between the two organisations. Looking ahead, while the EU-NATO relationship is politically sensitive, it is also the one that offers the most obvious potential for fruitful cooperation.
The EU has also developed its relationship with the African Union in the framework of the EU-Africa Partnership. Cooperation mainly takes the form of capacity-building in support of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). One of the main instruments of the partnership is the African Peace Facility (APF, financed by the European Development Fund) that funds the AU’s and sub-regional organisations’ activities at three different levels: peace support operations, capacity-building (support to the Stand-by Force, to the AU Peace and Security Department, etc.), and early response. More than €1.2 billion has been allocated to African peace and security through this channel since 2004. AU-led peace operations have largely benefited from APF support, most notably AMISOM in Somalia (more than €600 million since 2007), but also the two operations in Mali (AFISMA) and the Central African Republic (MISCA). The APF envelope for the years 2014-2016 is €750 million.
Though initially the source of tensions between the two organisations, as EUFOR could be interpreted as the sign that the AU was under-delivering, the EU operated alongside the AU until the UN took over from the latter in September 2014.
Finally, the EU has also established close links with a number of third states. Ap-proximately 45 non-EU states have participated in CSDP operations since the first mission in 2003 (about 30 if one deducts the countries that have joined the EU since 2004). In 2014, 15 partner countries participated in CSDP operations and missions.
And 16 have signed a Framework Participation Agreement (FPA) with the EU which provides a legal and political framework for such cooperation.4 While third states’
contribution is usually modest in size, it can also be substantial, as illustrated by the strength of the Turkish contingent in operation Althea or the Georgian contingent in EUFOR RCA.
At these different levels, the EU’s positioning fits the inter-institutional framework presented in the first chapter of this paper, in the sense that the EU has interacted with other institutions in a process that combines a genuine wish to develop co-operation mechanisms based on its comparative advantages with the will to assert itself as an autonomous, at times self-interested, crisis management actor.
These various interaction processes have contributed to the credibility and legitima-cy of the EU in the crisis management field. Institutions like the UN or the AU have to some extent been expecting support or cooperation from the EU, as illustrated in the CAR with EUFOR RCA acting as a bridging operation to the AU (eventually the UN) or in Somalia where the EU has played a key role in funding AMISOM. And reciprocally, any EU planning process takes account of the presence of these other actors as components of the international crisis management efforts.