ABSTRACT
European integration has probably been the most successful exercise in conflict resolution in history. It started with the integration of the coal and steel industries of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in the early 1950s, and later became an economically integrated community of states, which has constituted the basis of a peaceful Europe for more than half a century. The driving forces behind European integration were economic, but the objectives were predominantly political. As integration advanced and the potential for conflicts in Western Europe faded, the European Union’s concern with conflicts gradually externalized. The EU’s concern was increasingly with non-EU conflicts which could affect its security. After the end of the Cold War, the EU was dragged into efforts to prevent, manage and resolve potential and existing conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. With eastern enlargement effectively accomplished and the EU’s common foreign and security policy developing apace, the EU has been playing an increasingly active role in conflict management worldwide.
