ABSTRACT
The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) enhanced the prospects of the European Union’s (EU) independent actions in international conflict management. The CSDP has provided the EU with an autonomous capacity to launch missions outside the United Nations (UN) framework. But neither civilian nor military instruments have been able to bring their full potential to crisis management. Since the launch of its first missions, the EU has moved its focus from what was intended to encompass a full range of crisis management tasks to an approach that involves primarily post-conflict peacebuilding. The autonomous nature of the CSDP has led to the development of the EU’s specific approach to peacebuilding. While the EU’s conceptualisation of peacebuilding is based on the UN normative framework, the CSDP has evolved in a direction that reflects the EU’s foreign policy preferences. This chapter discusses the development of the peacebuilding capabilities in the CSDP while outlining their doctrinal and institutional set-up. The analysis of the objectives of the mandates of the CSDP instruments highlights the point that most EU missions and operations are deployed in post-conflict scenarios and tasked with peacebuilding.
