ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how continuity prevails in the EU’s Sahel policy. The opening section outlines the fragmented architecture of EU peacebuilding, from the Lisbon Treaty to recent innovations like the European Peace Facility and the Civilian Compact. It then analyses the broader impact of inertia during both the Western decade and the post-coup period. This chapter unpacks the core mechanisms of strategic inertia. Groupthink reveals how EU bureaucrats foster supranational cohesion to resist the influence of member states, particularly from dominant actors such as France. Backlash Prevention emphasizes selective engagement with civil society, filtering partners to reinforce liberal values, while decision-making inertia unfolds along two cleavages: national versus supranational and security versus development. In Pathological Behaviours, the EU’s use of vague mandates and information control emerges as a tactic to neutralize local pressures and maintain normative consistency. Despite pressures to adopt a more securitarian posture, bureaucrats from the European External Action Service (EEAS) and European Commission (EC) manoeuvred to uphold liberal peace principles. The EU’s recalibration post-2021, marked by a withdrawal from security-heavy missions and renewed emphasis on liberal peacebuilding, underscores how bureaucratic inertia serves both as a constraint on change and as a deliberate strategy for safeguarding institutional identity and liberal legitimacy.
