ABSTRACT
The Treaty on European Union commits the EU to the principles of peace and justice in its external action. Peace mediation and transitional justice, and the related fields of security sector reform and rule of law reform, can help achieve these objectives. As the narrative of the EU as a peace project makes clear, there is nothing inherently 'foreign' about peace mediation or transitional justice. EU member states have experienced genocide, civil war, territorial conflicts, authoritarianism, occupation, and inter-state war in their recent histories. By 2003 the EU's position had developed, although again given EU support to the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and the nascent ICC, perhaps not as much as might have been expected. The European Security Strategy (ESS) declared: It is a condition of a rule-based international order that law evolves in response to developments such as proliferation, terrorism and global warming.
