ABSTRACT

Let me take you 10 years ahead in time. The Council has just commemorated the fact that it has been 15 years since the EU deployed its first European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ESDP is no longer the growth sector of the EU’s foreign policy, as it once used to be. The reason is not, unfortunately, a decline in the number of conflicts around the world nor a further decline in popular support of the European Union (EU). Rather, one reason is efficiency: a protracted global economic crisis and healthy competition among international organisations has led to increased specialisation and a useful division of labour, although the EU is no longer the only international organisation with civilian capacities. The EU steps in where the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), or the African Union do not have enough troops, cannot find political consensus or are met with resistance by a host country.