ABSTRACT
The civil-military crisis management of the European Union (EU) is characterized by the interplay between the EU member state principals, on the one hand, and their EU agents on the other hand. The policy under scrutiny here, EU crisis management, lacks a generally accepted definition (Boin et al. 2006: 488-89; see also Chapter 1). Thus, the boundary between ‘EU crisis management’ and other activities in the field of EU foreign policy is often elusive. Crucially, while EU crisis management activities are primarily associated with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the second pillar, there are also crisis management instruments in the first, i.e. the Community pillar. For the purpose of this chapter, EU agents are defined as the EU administrations composed of EU officials in opposition to the EU institutions composed of national government representatives, i.e. the principals. These agents encompass the supranational European Commission as well as administrative and executive structures of the Council of the European Union such as the General Secretariat of the Council,2 headed by the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and the EU Special Representatives with their support staff.
