Implementing CSDP missions: the daily travails of police experts

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has run numerous missions under its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Researchers have long highlighted various challenges, which ultimately hamper the EU’s ability to conduct crisis management operations abroad. However, only rarely are those at the forefront of CSDP given a voice. Building on recent contributions that focus on the everyday implementation of peace operations and drawing on an extensive set of in-depth interviews with European police officers, we examine mission members’ perspectives on challenges regularly discussed at headquarter levels. We show how seemingly mundane challenges, such as tight control imposed on missions by Brussels-based institutions, an extensive mission-internal bureaucracy and a rigid adherence to administrative logics, can significantly hamper missions’ everyday operation on the ground. We also highlight that staffing CSDP missions is more complex than simply meeting quantitative targets and the difficulties that arise for missions’ day-to-day operation when officers lack necessary skills and mission personnel rotates frequently. In addition, we also offer a glimpse into the ways in which police officers cope with these challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• CSDP
• international missions
• policing
• everyday implementation

Introduction

In January 2003, the European Union (EU) launched its first ever crisis management mission, sending experts to Bosnia and Herzegovina.¹ The mission was mandated to assist in creating a modern, sustainable, professional and multi-ethnic police force. Two decades later, in January 2023, the count stood at 37 civilian and military EU missions and operations deployed to the EU’s immediate neighbourhood and further afield, 21 of which were ongoing. These missions and operations have arguably become one of the most visible instruments of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Differing widely in size and scope, the EU has, inter alia, deployed missions to support the creation of a civilian police service in Afghanistan (EUPOL Afghanistan, 2007–2016), to support rule of law institutions in Kosovo (EULEX Kosovo, 2008-ongoing), to provide strategic advice to the Iraqi security sector (EUAM Iraq 2017-ongoing) and to advise on civilian security sector reform in Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine, 2014-ongoing). Today, CSDP missions remain central elements of the EU’s efforts to foster peace, stabilise conflict-affected and transitioning states, and to enhance the EU’s own security. A majority of CSDP missions has been civilian led, and a sizable portion included a mandate for police reform to improve the capacity of host state security agencies to provide security to the state and its citizens. The EU’s Global Strategy from 2016 saw these civilian missions as a “trademark of CSDP” and as an essential component of the EU’s integrated approach (European Union 2016, p. 47).

However, the effectiveness of these deployments – and therefore also the future of the EU’s engagement in crisis management – is debatable. The spectacular failure of 20 years of international engagement in Afghanistan and the travails of the EU’s (and the United Nations’) Mali interventions are prominent illustrations of the difficulties of even long-term international engagement in crisis regions. For the case of EU external engagement, researchers have observed that the EU has found it difficult to deploy its full crisis management potential (Faleg 2020, p. 136) and that despite its commitments, the “EU’s record so far leaves room for improvement” (Juncos and Blockmans 2018, p. 131). These challenges to the effectiveness of the EU’s foreign and security policies are not new. They were already part of Hill’s (1993) seminal concept of a “capability–expectation gap” between what the then European Communities (EC) were expected to do and what they were able to deliver with limited resources and instruments and with divergent interests.

In the meantime, researchers have honed in on an “intention-implementation gap” between the EU’s stated objectives and the way these are implemented, and an “implementation-reception/perceptions gap” between the implementation of policies and their reception in host states (see Rieker and Blockmans 2019, p. 2). Adding to this line of inquiry, we study the micropolitics of implementing civilian CSDP missions to better understand the intention-implementation gap in EU external relations. We ask how the everyday challenges encountered by mission personnel in CSDP deployments widen the gap between the EU’s political ambitions as expressed in mission mandates and their effective implementation on the ground. By focusing on constraints to everyday implementation practices of mission personnel, we add a so far partially missing piece of the puzzle to studies of CSDP mission effectiveness. As Juncos and Blockmans (2018, p. 132, see similarly Rieker and Blockmans 2019, p. 3) highlight: relevant research has so far focused on the EU’s institutional framework and Brussels-based policies and procedures, while considerably less attention has been paid to how EU crisis response and peacebuilding mandates are implemented in practice. This observation also holds true for research on crisis management operations beyond the EU’s framework, for example in the context of UN peacekeeping operations (Blair et al. 2022, Ruffa and Rietjens 2023).

In the case of CSDP missions and operations, many detailed studies examine the ever-changing institutional set-up of the EU’s CSDP in Brussels. Exemplary works include Dijkstra et al.’s (2019) comparative analysis of institutional learning in the deployment of civilian crisis management capabilities and Bergmann and Müller’s (2021) study of challenges to CSDP institutional reform. This line of research identifies three sets of challenges to the effectiveness of CSDP missions. First, CSDP governance and administrative structures within the EU have been shown to cause problems (e.g. Mattelaer 2010, Smith 2017, Juncos and Blockmans 2018, Fiott 2020, p. 4, Bergmann and Müller 2021, p. 1676). The second set is broadly concerned with the EU’s capabilities for crisis management and examines, among other aspects, the rules and practices for procurement, and force generation and recruitment for civilian and military missions (e.g. Pirozzi et al. 2018, Henke 2019, Smit 2020, p. 3). A third set of challenges relates to the role of domestic counterparts and their interactions with CSDP missions, and to local perceptions of CSDP mission effectiveness on the ground (e.g. Zarembo, 2017, Ejdus and Juncos 2018, Müller and Zahda 2018).

Our paper adds to a better understanding of the first two sets of challenges identified above: while a focus on domestic perceptions of CSDP missions is outside the scope of our argument, our empirical research reveals how challenges discussed in reference to headquarter levels play out during implementation on the ground in mission areas. By doing so, this paper offers additional clues as to why CSDP missions are sometimes not as effective as desired. Thereby, it also contributes to the larger question of EU foreign policy effectiveness, understood as “the Union’s ability to shape world affairs in accordance with the objectives it adopts on particular issues” (Thomas 2012, p. 460, see further Niemann and Bretherton 2013). Our contribution to the study of CSDP mission effectiveness focuses not on measuring a mission’s direct outcome or impact; instead, we attempt to better understand its “process performance” (see Gutner and Thompson 2010). For UN peacekeeping, Blair et al. (2022, p. 665) have identified process performance as a scope condition influencing overall performance and ultimately success. Gutner and Thompson (2010, p. 236) caution that process performance is at best a “necessary but not sufficient condition for favorable outcomes”. This caveat notwithstanding, one study that applied the notion of process performance to EU police reform in Afghanistan and Kosovo found that managerial latitude and discretion on the ground in missions was likely to enhance peacebuilding performance (Eckhard 2016).

Building on these earlier findings and on insights from implementation research in public policy, we study a particular type of peace- and statebuilder: police officers deployed as part of civilian CSDP missions. In line with seminal studies by Lipsky (1980) and Sabatier (1986), we expect these front-line implementers of CSDP to be able to act with varying degrees of discretion. Consequently, we expect mission members to be actors in their own right when it comes to the implementation of missions. So far, however, research on the challenges confronting EU crisis response missions has paid surprisingly little attention to those who are at the forefront of European security policy: mission members who are tasked with implementing often ambitious objectives. Thus, this paper gives members of EU crisis response missions a voice, focusing on the perceptions and practices of European police officers deployed in civilian CSDP missions to better understand what challenges they face. By focusing on their everyday efforts to implement EU missions, we also contribute to an emerging and rich line of inquiry into everyday foreign-policy making in the EU (see Adler-Nissen 2016, Bremberg et al. 2022).

To hear from implementers what it means to carry out EU crisis response and security policy on a day-to-day basis, we interviewed 90 European police officers (21 of whom were female) from 15 EU member states between May 2019 and July 2021.² Virtually all of them had participated in a CSDP mission previously or were participating in a mission at the time of the interview.³ About a third of the interviewees also had experience in UN missions. In addition, some were responsible for dealing with police missions at national planning units. Initially, interviews were conducted in person, including in Kosovo, Ukraine and Germany. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in February 2020, our data collection primarily relied on electronic platforms. Interviews usually lasted about one hour and were – bar a few exceptions – recorded and subsequently transcribed. Interviewees were guaranteed anonymity to allow for frank discussions about the reality of working within CSDP missions of the EU. Our interviews were problem-centred and relied on open-ended questions about how officers conducted their day-to-day work and the main challenges they faced while doing so.

The article proceeds as follows: The next section outlines how we combine insights from research on everyday and micropolitical dynamics in International Relations with insights from implementation research in public policy to study everyday implementation practices in CSDP missions. The third section sketches out two sets of challenges that constrain police officers in their everyday work within CSDP. The fourth section offers a glimpse into how officers react to some of these challenges. The conclusion summarises our findings, contextualises the challenges and discusses inroads for research and policy.

The micropolitics of implementing civilian CSDP missions

This paper’s focus on the everyday challenges of police officers’ work in CSDP missions mirrors a turn in International Relations and Security Studies to move toward the study of micro-level dynamics and politics of the everyday. Micropolitical dynamics have become “integral to understanding how macropolitics gets enacted, embodied and embedded” and they can shape trends on the macro-level (Solomon and Steele 2017, p. 270, see also Chakravarty 2013). To better understand such micropolitical dynamics in civilian CSDP missions, this article examines policy implementation on the ground and the role of policy implementers to highlight factors that constrain the execution of mandates formulated in Brussels.

Research in adjacent fields has examined how implementing actors see and shape the implementation of international policy. With “Aidland” and its focus on the development sector, Mosse (2011) and colleagues draw our attention to the everyday work of development professionals. Similarly, in “Peaceland” Autesserre (2014) highlights how the everyday practices of intervention influence the outcomes of conflict resolution efforts. And Froitzheim et al. (2021) offer a case study on the implementation of peace operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by drawing on bottom-up implementation studies. However, the everyday implementation of EU CSDP missions – and police officers as crucial actors therein – has attracted little attention so far.

In studying the implementation of CSDP missions, we also draw on public policy research. Scholars of public policy have long demonstrated that policies are often not implemented as originally foreseen, and called for analyses of “what happens between the establishment of policy and its impact in the world of action” (O'Toole 2000, p. 273). A crucial lesson from classical implementation research thus guides our empirical analysis of micropolitical dynamics in CSDP: policymaking and policy implementation are interdependent. Implementation is not a linear result of policy making, but must be understood as an interactive process involving numerous governmental actors on different levels (Wegrich 2015, p. 342). Ultimately, policymakers and implementers negotiate policy outcomes, and these processes of negotiation change the originally intended policies (Wegrich 2015, p. 351). In this understanding, “policies do not succeed or fail on their own merits; rather their progress is dependent upon the process of implementation” (Hudson et al. 2019, p. 1).

Front-line implementers – such as police officers – can thus have a considerable degree of influence on whether and how specific policies are implemented: “Although many of their decisions may seem small individually, in aggregate they may radically reshape strategic policy intention” (Hudson et al. 2019, p. 3). The study that arguably made this approach famous is Lipsky’s (1980) work on “street-level bureaucrats”, which among other actors examined police officers. While levels of discretion and implementers’ practices are influenced by the organisational and broader institutional environment in which they work (Wilson 1968, Cordner 2019, pp. 11–14), Lipsky highlighted that implementers enjoy discretion. Research in other public policy fields similarly demonstrates that discretion is a central – and necessary – element of policy implementation (Tummers and Bekkers 2014). Thus, since policy implementers are actors with (varying) degrees of autonomy, understanding policy outcomes requires complementing analyses of top-down decision-making with bottom-up perspectives, focusing on how actors pursue their objectives (Sabatier 1986, p. 22) and to investigate how implementers navigate their work.

Drawing on these baseline insights, we examine the everyday implementation of CSDP mission mandates by police officers deployed within these missions. In doing so, we propose to take seriously these front-line implementers of CSDP, and the everyday challenges they face in making the EU’s crisis response effective. From this perspective, challenges such as bureaucratic rules governing the procurement of equipment to be handed over to host state are not trivial because they affect the prospects of whether EU missions can make a difference on the ground. By analysing these issues, we move closer to an understanding of EU crisis response that is sensitive to the fact that policies rarely succeed or fail as a whole (McConnell 2015, p. 236) – and that micro-level challenges can derail macro-level policies. For police work in international missions, Caparini (2017, p. 36) argues along similar lines that

actively seeking feedback from police peacekeepers, and from those who interact and work with them, can help us to better identify organizational problems such as management practices and leadership behaviour that help shape this complex system [of peace operations] and the ability of police and other components of peace operations to effectively implement their mandated tasks.

Our focus on the everyday of police officers as implementers in CSDP thus enables us to provide a fine-grained analysis of these grey areas in EU crisis response. Taking CSDP mission members seriously helps us to reveal how institutional settings, routines and established practices within EU foreign and security policymaking affect the everyday work of policy implementers.

Everyday implementation challenges in CSDP missions

Research on the effectiveness of EU external relations and EU missions and operations has identified several problems that undermine the success of EU foreign policies. Prominent among these are an overly complex governance and administrative structure and the EU’s lack of adequate capabilities and resources. Our empirical analysis reveals how these challenges – that have been observed primarily at the level of EU institutions and in EU member states – play out on the ground and how they affect the everyday work of mission experts. Our interviews also reveal that police officers working in different CSDP missions have similar concerns in their efforts of implementing EU CSDP policies. To come to these findings, we relied on an explorative approach to analyse our extensive interview material. After collecting a broad range of views on the implementation of CSDP mandates, we grouped concerns expressed by interviewees into categories. In line with the macro-level research literature on EU effectiveness, we subsequently zoomed in on two sets of day-to-day implementation challenges that help to explain why EU crisis response policies may go astray: First, how the day-to-day operation of EU missions on the ground is affected by governance issues and administrative structures of the EU; secondly, how EU capabilities, in particular in the area of force generation and staffing, impact the ability of CSDP mission members to implement their mandates.

EU governance and administrative structures

When it comes to the EU’s governance and administrative structures, seemingly mundane challenges can, in combination, significantly impede missions’ day-to-day activities. In the following sections, we discuss how (a) attempts to control missions from Brussels, (b) extensive mission-internal bureaucratic procedures and (c) a rigid adherence to (dysfunctional) administrative logics can negatively affect police officers’ everyday efforts to implement CSDP.

Centralised control

International missions in post-conflict situations have long been seen as marked by tensions between headquarters – seeking to control and steer developments on the ground – and practitioners in the field who need sufficient leeway to do their work in an uncertain environment (Schlichte and Veit 2007, Da Costa and Karlsrud 2013). Our interlocutors have pointed at Brussels-based institutions’ attempts to control the daily work carried out on the ground as undermining their effectiveness.

Thus, a Swedish trainer in EUAM Ukraine saw a need to “push down the mandate to the doers, give them more space, to be able to change things quicker”.⁴ Several senior mission representatives argued that while missions had to be accountable, Brussels-based institutions – mainly the CPCC (the EU’s operational headquarter for civilian CSDP missions) – did not give Heads of Mission and Deputy Heads of Mission enough leeway. For one officer, the CPCC was “micromanaging” how the mission spent its budget.⁵ Others noted that the CPCC was too involved in the minutiae of recruitment: Instead of supporting missions, the “CPCC is increasingly getting involved in the job description drafting, in the interviews, in the selection process”.⁶ The CPCC was also seen as “interfering” by producing job descriptions that met bureaucratic rather than practical needs on the ground. A senior member of EUAM Iraq pointed to “very, very bureaucratic” rules for hiring new mission members, which “are hindering the mission to be efficient sometimes”.⁷ In the eyes of a senior officer in Somalia, the CPCC and also the European External Action Service (EEAS) “have very much an administrative focus. They focus on the process, we focus on the objective”.⁸ A Scandinavian police officer seconded to the EEAS confirmed this focus on processes and the convoluted structure and decision-making procedures of Brussels-based institutions: “The EEAS is a kind of French bureaucracy, really difficult to manoeuvre”. Even though he had written a thesis on EU crisis management he found that “it does not matter because you need to live it, to learn it [the Brussels system]” over many years.⁹ These concerns expressed by CSDP implementers dovetail with earlier research showcasing the need for greater managerial latitude in EU crisis management operations (Eckhard 2016).

Extensive mission-internal bureaucracy

Related to the view that some processes in missions are dominated by Brussels, interviewees stressed that “missions are a lighter version of the [Brussels based] bureaucracy, but still a big bureaucracy”.¹⁰ Thus, extensive mission-internal bureaucratic duties distract mission members from their core function: working with host state counterparts.

Deskwork constitutes a large part of police work on the domestic level (Kop et al. 1999, p. 336, Huey and Ricciardelli 2015, p. 202, Tanner and Dupont 2015, p. 668). Mission work (at least in missions with a non-executive mandate) does not require some of the deskwork that consumes considerable time at home, such as producing case files or reports for courts. However, EU missions impose their own layer of bureaucracy, which creates opportunity costs for mission members. A Swedish member of EUAM Ukraine felt stuck in the office, which she regarded as “a waste of my knowledge” because this way she could not advise Ukrainian counterparts. She argued she was

not a project manager. That is not what I do and I am not really good at it. […] I think that this mission – I don’t know, we are 300 people – I would guess that 95 percent of us are just sitting in offices, writing documents internally.¹¹

She continued to criticise that due to its own internal shortcomings, the mission was ill-suited to offer advice to Ukrainian counterparts:

I think also that our directions and priorities are being changed too often and too quickly. […] Sometimes when I do the management trainings I think; “here I am telling you guys how to work and it is not so easy to understand in three days” but then I go back to the mission and think: “oh my gosh, we are not better in the mission sometimes.”¹²

A colleague of hers supported the view that work in the mission tilted heavily towards bureaucracy, thereby neglecting interaction with partners: “They spend a little bit too much time on administration and preparing things. Instead of actually looking into what they [Ukrainian counterparts] need”.¹³ Another officer asserted: “the EU really loves reporting, so we do that daily – it is a lot of administration”.¹⁴

Beyond internal reporting, police officers expressed concern about other inefficient bureaucratic processes that similarly hamper their day-to-day work. A Swedish police officer’s account – also from EUAM Ukraine – provides an illustration of bureaucratic processes within the mission and resulting opportunity costs:

Just an airline ticket, doing their trip and coming back, and putting all this paper work together, it could take twelve hours, just for one person in the mission. And those twelve hours could be put down to two or three [hours] with the right system. In the other hours, you could do some trainings. So the system, and dealing with money received, and all this must be more efficient. There must be a way, because it is so inefficient.¹⁵

Police experts working for CSDP missions in Africa reported similar bureaucratic challenges. A French officer with EUCAP Sahel Niger said that the mission had an annual budget to spend on cars, computers, or buildings. However, it could take several years for the mission to deliver equipment, undermining Nigerien counterparts’ trust in the mission.¹⁶ A German officer working in a field office of EUCAP Sahel Niger also thought the mission’s administration stymied the procurement of equipment. Rules prescribe public bidding; controllers are involved; and the administration, the human resources unit and the legal advisor must give their approval. The legal advisor, the police officer lamented, had stopped projects in the past “because he spotted a mistake in the public call or whatever”.¹⁷ These bureaucratic hurdles may lead to frustration because:

I am here for only one year. And when I see that I cannot reach specific goals because something got stuck, because someone is on holidays or cannot decide or has reached the end of the mission term. That can wear you down. I mean, I understand the background: transparency, etc. But it is hard for our daily work.¹⁸

Rigidity and adherence to (dysfunctional) administrative logics

Instructions coming from Brussels and inflexible rules governing missions can result in a rigid adherence to (dysfunctional) administrative logics, stymying mission effectiveness. Some interlocutors were particularly worried about the sustainability of activities that reflected administrative logics of the EU and its missions, rather than conditions on the ground. A member of EUCAP Sahel Niger, for example, outlined that some of the training content prescribed by CPCC reflected European priorities rather than the needs and realities of local counterparts, which speaks to the previously discussed tensions between centralised control and implementer discretion. In this case, CPCC stipulated that training courses had to include lessons on gender and human rights. Also, the CPCC would monitor the training material to ensure it sufficiently included these elements; in fact, the CPCC had created two full in-mission positions for monitoring, which in the eyes of our interlocutor satisfied the needs of Brussels rather than helping to increase the mission’s impact in Niger.¹⁹ In EUAM Ukraine, a Danish officer lamented that due to regulations of the mission, “[a]ll the training that we give is based on projects. And once we have done one project, we cannot repeat it … That is a little bit stupid”.²⁰ In EUCAP Sahel Niger as well as EUAM Ukraine, interlocutors described how both missions failed to take into account the work conditions of those attending training programmes.²¹ Accordingly, in Niger, the mission’s attempt to diffuse French-based approaches to criminal investigation was doomed to fail because Nigerien police,

are sitting in super primitive police stations, without computer access, without being able to surveil telecommunications or search the Internet. They are bombarded [with information suitable for a European context] and the conditions down there are not considered.²²

In addition, a “per diem” or daily allowance, paid by missions to attendees of training programmes, undermines long-term sustainability by creating wrong incentives. A French member of EUCAP Sahel Niger criticised the per diem offered by the mission as too high, since it was “[l]ike if someone coming to Germany were given 10.000 Euro to follow a training session. You would find a lot of people who are interested”.²³ A German colleague seconded this assessment and added that “we actually know that this does not lead to much”.²⁴

Insufficient adaptation to local contexts is a well-known problem in international interventions (for a review of the literature see Leonardsson and Rudd 2015). What our investigation adds to this debate is (a) to show how deficient context sensitivity marks the day-to-day operation of CSDP missions on the ground, and (b) to highlight that this is not necessarily the fault of front-line implementers, who are aware of the problem but can ultimately not change dysfunctional administrative logics.

A case where our interlocutors saw a rigid adherence to administrative logics as having a particularly detrimental effect on the effectiveness of CSDP missions concerns handover procedures. As discussed in following sections, short tours and a quick turnover of personnel in CSDP missions threaten the continuity of work carried out on the ground. In principle, handover procedures are meant to mitigate this problem. However, our interviews demonstrate that existing handover procedures are insufficient.²⁵ According to mission members, their work would greatly benefit from overlap between predecessors and successors because “you lose so much knowledge every time you switch a mission member, instead of letting them just serve together for two weeks. It is strange”.²⁶ As one interlocutor explained, “[o]f course, we write handover papers. And we are trying to collect the most important papers in folders for the next adviser to find”.²⁷ However, for him, these documents do not replace face-to-face meetings. This is not least because a physical presence allows including counterparts in handover procedures, who – in the words of that officer – might otherwise find that it “is almost like starting all over again. I have nothing against what you told me. But your predecessor, we also discussed this eight months ago. It is like inventing the wheel all over again”.²⁸ To address this issue, a senior Swedish member of EUCAP Somalia had asked Brussels for his successor to arrive earlier – but to no avail.²⁹ For a fellow Swedish officer the reason for Brussels’ adherence to its rigid administrative logic and denial of the request was clear: “it’s all about the money”.³⁰

Before we touch on how mission members respond to these challenges, the next sections will turn to staffing challenges, which have long been identified to negatively affect CSDP missions.

EU capabilities: force generation and staffing

There is ample research on challenges of force generation within the EU (see further Henke 2019). However, the consequences on the ground have not been analysed closely. Beyond the simple observation that force generation tends to be complex and slow, our interviews reveal how difficult staffing procedures and rapid rotations stymy a mission’s ability to implement its mandate. Many police officers referred to staffing issues in missions as having a considerable impact on how (well) the overall mission was able to implement its mandate. Main concerns related to recruiting the right experts with the right skills for a mission or a specific job, and the appropriate length that officers should stay in a mission.

Staffing challenges

Police work is a highly demanding profession. Police officers have to carry out a large number of tasks, and their actions sometimes decide over life and death. Recruiting the right personnel is therefore crucial for any police organisation (see White and Escobar 2008, Cordner 2019, ch. 9, 10). For CSDP missions, human resource management is crucial too, as their members have to cope with challenging and dynamic conditions. However, many of our interlocutors explained how deployed officers, including even senior mission members, regularly lacked the right backgrounds or required skills, and that lengths of deployments were frequently inadequate. Our research thus illustrates that staffing CSDP missions properly is more complex than simply meeting quantitative targets or maintaining a balance among EU member states.

An obvious staffing challenge that has an impact on the everyday implementation of international missions relates to language skills. Our interviewees reported that English language proficiency varied considerably across national contingents,³¹ for instance among the Formed Police Units (FPU) in EULEX Kosovo, and explained this to be a result of different national recruitment practices.³² For CSDP missions in francophone Africa, the main challenge is to find personnel with adequate proficiency in French. France and Belgium, and to a lesser extent Romania, have a competitive advantage; consequently, their police tend to dominate CSDP missions in francophone Africa.

Beyond language skills, a lack of relevant policing knowledge may also hamper mission implementation. However, while it seems obvious that subject matter expertise (e.g. on community policing, the illegal arms trade or public order policing) is crucial for joining a mission, police officers within missions do not always agree on which professional background best fits a mission context. For some interviewees, professional backgrounds were closely tied to national origin. Support to public order policing by EUAM Ukraine is an example. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the mission promoted a public order model that was based on Scandinavian (especially Swedish) practices. Some mission members questioned the ability especially of gendarmeries or Eastern European colleagues to properly apply and teach the model in Ukraine, because “they do not use the same system”.³³ One member of EUAM Ukraine suggested a division of labour for his mission: “Leave all public order matters to Sweden, Denmark, Germany. Leave all community policing to the Dutch, English, and French. Leave all the border things with all the East European countries. And so on”.³⁴ A Danish colleague in EUAM Ukraine seconded this view: “The European equal principle – we have to differentiate, countries can apply for the same positions and you have a national balance – it is just not working with that public order project”.³⁵

Other interviewees, by contrast, argued that missions benefit from multi-nationality. A Swedish officer highlighted that since everybody comes to the mission with their national policing background, having people from more countries involved creates a more diverse tool-box and enables discussion over which tools work best for a given situation.³⁶ For him, this is an advantage for implementing the mission’s objective as long as team members are able to adapt to different models after joining the mission. For another officer, diversity of national policing backgrounds “was the original purpose of CSDP, and it should be an objective for management”.³⁷ One country’s dominance also made it difficult, from her perspective, for members from other states to feel part of the mission: “This takes a lot of energy. I always feel sorry for new colleagues”.

A particularly prominent aspect of staffing that affects missions and their implementation concerns the length and number of tours of duty. Our interviews suggest that tours can be both too short and too long. Short tours of about a year mean that officers’ window to work productively for a mission can be rather small because it takes time to adjust to the work environment. A member of EUCAP Somalia said it had taken him five months to understand the mission context even though he had been living in Somalia for one and a half years before joining the mission.³⁸ A German police officer with experience in Kosovo estimated that during a one-year tour, given the induction period, vacation and departure preparations, a mission member was able to work properly only for six to seven months. He favourably mentioned Italy, which allowed its police to stay in a mission for up to three years.³⁹ A compatriot of his similarly said that some EU countries had allowed their police officers to spend several years in Afghanistan, which gave them considerable advantages over German police, whose terms were limited to one year.⁴⁰

On the other hand, long tours – going beyond three years – can also be a problem. This is because

you really start to understand the mission after one year. After two years, you are on the top of your [game]. And then in the third year you can see that people tend to personalise things […] you tend to have your own views about everything.⁴¹

In addition, many interlocutors expressed concern about so-called “mission people” who move from one mission to the next without enough time back home in between tours: “Everybody in this mission has been to Afghanistan, half of them have been to Iraq – and that creates an inbred atmosphere and system, so that is not good”.⁴²

And their consequences

What follows from these staffing challenges for the day-to-day implementation of mandates? Beyond problems for interpersonal communication, inadequate language skills have a detrimental effect on what is often missions’ core business: training. A Dutch officer referred to his own government’s failure to deploy police with adequate language skills, which stymied the mission’s work since “some of them were not even skilled enough to give the training”.⁴³ A German officer’s recollection of training sessions in EUCAP Sahel Niger offers a particularly telling example of how training may become ultimately ineffective when trainers lack appropriate language skills:

So the PowerPoint [slides] are completely in English. And then you have a Nigerien translator who translates everything from English to Nigerien French. There everything gets lost. The Nigerien colleagues have already switched off.⁴⁴

In missions with an executive mandate, like EULEX Kosovo, insufficient language skills can even become an operational hazard, as one interlocutor explained with regard to situations where the remaining Polish Formed Police Unit had to be called in to maintain public order: “In this case, the Polish don't speak English … The public doesn't speak English. Especially in such a chaotic situation. So right from the start, you run the risk of having misunderstandings and misinterpretations”.⁴⁵

In addition to language problems, other staffing issues, too, undermine missions’ ability to translate their mandates into action. As a senior member of EUCAP Somalia explains, missions may not actually be able to recruit the experts they need to operate: “Basically, we are never able to have a full staff. We have a very, very big difficulty in recruiting especially maritime expertise. It is very difficult […] those are not skills and expertise that are very common”.⁴⁶ In addition, candidates recruited as thematic experts may lack the required expertise, putting in question missions’ ability to provide training or advice in that area. A community policing expert in EUAM Ukraine, for example, was puzzled when he found out that new mission colleagues from an Eastern European country wanted to learn about community policing even though they were supposed to teach it to their Ukrainian counterparts.⁴⁷ Similarly, one interlocutor – a German police officer – admitted she did not have the required thematic expertise for her position but that her seconding organisation encouraged her to apply nonetheless. This meant that she had to rely on her colleague in the mission to carry out her tasks, who, according to her, had originally also not been an expert on the subject matter they both worked on.⁴⁸ While these might be two rather extreme examples of how deficient skills might affect a mission, problems can arise even when officers have the right knowledge. As a Portuguese Gendarme explained, that is because being an expert on something does not automatically mean that officers are able or trained to transmit this expertise to their respective counterparts.⁴⁹ This applies, in particular, to strategic advisory positions for which.

[y]ou need to have experience: mentoring and advising is basically not for junior officers. You need to have strategic thinking. You have to be experienced, and you have to have been working at the strategic level. That is not something that we find very often.⁵⁰

When it comes to short tours of duty, our interlocutors point to a lack of continuity and its impact on missions’ success. As was already alluded to, tours of only a year mean that officers’ time on the job is rather short; during a one-year deployment, a mission can realistically only expect a few months of actual output. Especially tasks that require officers to build personal relations with their counterparts, such as mentoring and advising, may be difficult to carry out effectively when officers only stay for one year. That is because “for counterparts it is not easy to adjust to anything because something new is constantly coming up. […] I have the feeling that the longevity, the sustainability is lost as a result”.⁵¹ This lack of continuity can be exacerbated when pre- and successors come with different national policing backgrounds. That is because police officers’ work in CSDP missions is significantly informed by their domestic policing experience (Neubauer et al. 2022).

A lack of continuity due to short tours is not only a problem for host-state counterparts but has knock-on effects for missions themselves. Thus, short tours can undermine organisational learning, since “with the rotations, we lose our organisational memory, or our company memory. Because no one remembers an operation that was a year and a half ago”.⁵² Short tours, moreover, come with the danger that mission members adopt a short-term outlook, thus neglecting longer-term objectives. Especially first-time mission members may “think they will make a big impact, […] they want to do something, and they say: ‘Here I am, I only have one year.’ […] And then, when they get home, they are like wow, they did not do anything”.⁵³

On the other hand, overly long tours or successive tours of duty are not a panacea either. Our interviews point to two concerns. First, so-called “mission people”, who have not carried out regular policing duties for some time,

miss whatever is happening [at home]. Because all the organisations are developing. And if you are just in the mission, you know, you want to have this mission life. You are working hard, definitely but it is also important for you to send good reports to Brussels and you don’t get the new inputs.⁵⁴

When mission experts do not improve their skills through domestic police work, they run the risk of transferring outdated techniques to partner states. Secondly, long deployments can undermine productivity within missions: “Every mission that has been there for a long time suffers from the same challenges. You have people who have been there too long. And they become comfortable and they perhaps are not as productive”.⁵⁵ Many interviewees saw a period between two and three years and a mandatory time back home in between tours as the optimum for working successfully in CSDP missions.

How officers cope with challenges

How do officers approach the challenges described above in their day-to-day work? While a systematic review of coping mechanisms across missions is beyond the scope of this article, we can nevertheless point to two patterns that emerge and might offer promising points of departure for future research. Our interviews indicate that mission experts deal with these challenges either through inventiveness and flexibility or by developing a tolerance for frustration.

When faced with rigid administrative logics or rules prescribed by Brussels that limit officers’ room for manoeuvre, they find ways to work around them or at least try to mitigate their effects. As a Swedish officer with EUAM Ukraine confided: “when it is not allowed to be called training, you call it something else”.⁵⁶ Asked whether his officers would also monitor their counterparts, a French officer deployed with EUCAP Sahel Mali revealed: “Officially no. But we are doing some ‘accompanying’ […] because we are not here for monitoring, we are just here for training and advising”. However, when requested by his Malian counterparts, he would nonetheless “send my expert in the field with them to help”.⁵⁷ In a similar vein, a Portuguese Gendarme deployed with EUCAP Somalia explained:

Our mandate is mentoring and advising […]. We do not have a training task. When you are doing mentoring and advising, there is no mentoring and advising without training. I would say that most of the things that we do are training-related. Only we do it under the cover of workshops, seminars, something like this. Because we should not be doing a training. But in the end, that is most of what we do.⁵⁸

In response to the insufficient handover procedures in missions, some interlocutors described how officers try to mitigate negative effects by relying on local staff of the mission, who “are here for a long time and they are excellent. Really. They know everything. So they are really good at getting you on board”.⁵⁹ Local staff, like interpreters, can also be helpful in building rapport with counterparts because they “have met these counterparts hundreds of times with different advisers” and can offer advice on how to establish relationships most effectively.⁶⁰ To mitigate the lack of handovers among the members of his unit, a senior French member of EUCAP Sahel Mali explained he would “speak face to face with each person coming here. And I explain what we did, what we want to do and what the current level is”.⁶¹

While these courses of action adopted by officers suggest a disposition to work towards the success of missions, our interviews also reveal a facet of inventiveness that may be cause for concern. Several interviewees suggested that at times mission members or missions themselves send overly positive (“sugar coated”) reports to Brussels in order to demonstrate progress.⁶² One former member of EUPOL Afghanistan thus recalled how the mission reported to Brussels that it had convinced an Afghan police general to expand community policing to new areas even though this expansion never happened; “it was only on paper”.⁶³ For a Swedish member of EUAM Ukraine, this “sugar coating” was connected to the “mission people” described earlier, who – in order to stay in the mission – start

to put on a little make-up [because] after a while you start to learn what the ambassador wants to see and what kind of reports they want at CIVCOM. And you start to know what you have to write here. Because it is almost impossible for Brussels to verify whether what you write is true or not.⁶⁴

Other interlocutors, however, saw the fault not exclusively with working-level experts acting out of self-interest. Instead, they pointed to mission members in senior management positions who insisted on reports being “polish[ed] so that it is better than it actually is, for some reason”.⁶⁵ While our interviews indicate that this “sugar coating” is a pathology of CSDP, we cannot provide an indication as to how widespread this practice is, in CSDP or other types of missions.

Finally, another way in which police officers deal with the challenges they face in implementing CSDP missions is to develop a tolerance for frustration and an attitude of acceptance. Because “otherwise you are going to get frustrated when you think that nothing is happening”.⁶⁶ Many interlocutors recalled how they or their colleagues were frustrated with problems they encountered or when projects and processes within the mission were cumbersome and slow.⁶⁷ Thus, interlocutors thought it important for mission members to be resilient and

to have the correct expectations, that it will take time, that you will be frustrated – chill out, do your part. Because we have several mission members that are really close to breaking up, just because they are so frustrated and it is going so slow.⁶⁸

The implication is that problems that plague CSDP missions might persist also because mission members develop a tolerance for frustration and, as a Swedish member of EUAM Ukraine put it, “accept that this is how it works”.⁶⁹

Conclusion

CSDP missions are central elements of European peacebuilding and stabilisation efforts. Their effectiveness, however, remains debatable. Previous research has highlighted a variety of difficulties missions face in reaching their goals. But those at the forefront of implementing mission mandates have only rarely been given a voice. Aiming to contribute to an emerging line of inquiry into the everyday foreign-policy making of the EU (Bremberg et al. 2022), this article has drawn on debates about the everyday implementation of peace operations (Froitzheim et al. 2021) to add mission members’ perspectives on challenges to the implementation of CSDP policy on the ground.

This paper focused on the process performance of missions and zoomed in on two particular sets of challenges. First, on the effects of the EU’s governance and administrative structures for CSDP missions; our interlocutors pointed to a host of seemingly technical issues that – when taken together – can significantly affect missions’ day-to-day operation. When it comes to the relationship between headquarters in Brussels and the missions, our interlocutors highlighted how Brussels’ attempts to control what happens on the ground can have a detrimental effect on missions’ ability to operate effectively. They pointed to a need for greater discretion, which dovetails with earlier research on the implementation of peace- and statebuilding missions (Eckhard 2016). Our interlocutors further pointed to an extensive mission-internal bureaucracy as an impediment to pursuing their mission’s objective. In addition, our research highlights how mission experts regularly face administrative logics – such as deficient handover procedures – that experts regard as stifling.

Secondly, when it comes to the capabilities needed to run CSDP missions effectively, our research illustrates how staffing issues that have long been visible at the level of headquarters stymy the everyday implementation of mission mandates. Thus, staffing CSDP missions is not merely about meeting quantitative targets or maintaining an adequate balance between officers and experts from different EU member states. Our interviews reveal the ways in which inadequate language skills and policing expertise can reduce the prospects of making a change on the ground. In addition, short tours of duty and a relatively rapid turnover of mission personnel – in combination with insufficient handover procedures – can stymy the sustainability of reform efforts.

Do these findings indicate that CSDP missions are inevitably doomed to fail? Not necessarily. Even though one of the coping mechanisms adopted by officers to deal with these challenges is to develop a tolerance for frustration and an attitude of acceptance, mission members also show much flexibility and inventiveness in their day-to-day work when faced with challenges that – in their perspective – undermine mission effectiveness. And while staffing issues and dysfunctional administrative structures have long been discussed as obstacles to the successful operation of CSDP missions, the everyday challenges we reveal are no unsurmountable obstacle to more effective European crisis management. Handover procedures are a case in point. As one interlocutor emphasised, the additional cost resulting from a brief overlap between outgoing and incoming personnel should be considered a worthwhile investment.⁷⁰

While our approach remained largely explorative, it generated points of departure to more systematically investigate some of the issues discussed here. Researchers and EU policymakers alike might think it worthwhile to draw more extensively on implementation research to find a balance between centralised control and implementers’ discretion for CSDP missions. Similarly, policymakers as well as researchers interested in how mission members react to challenges might be interested in systematically investigating which factors (or motives) spur which specific coping mechanisms in missions. No matter the direction of future research, our findings suggest that those at the very forefront of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy should be given more of a voice. Only then are researchers able to uncover and policymakers able to address the seemingly mundane but ultimately crucial everyday challenges that currently prevent CSDP missions from supporting host-state reforms more effectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number SCHR 1264/2-1] and [grant number FR 3506/2].

Notes

1 We thank Fabian de Hair and Fynn Mantey for excellent research assistance and our interviewees for sharing their insights.

2 Interviewees were from Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, France, Norway, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Austria and Ireland. One was from the UK.

3 Interviewees primarily drew on experience with EULEX Kosovo, EUAM Ukraine, EUCAP Sahel Mali, EUCAP Sahel Niger, EUCAP Somalia and EUAM Iraq as their most recent deployments. They further drew on previous experience with additional EU missions such as EUPOL Afghanistan or EUPOL COPPS.

4 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 15.03.2021, online.

5 Interview, female German police officer, 30.09.2020, online.

6 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

7 Interview, male Danish police officer, 09.07.2020, online.

8 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

9 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 12.03.2021, online.

10 Interview, male Danish police officer, 14.10.2019, Lviv.

11 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.10.2019, Kyiv (A).

12 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.10.2019, Kyiv (A).

13 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 10.10.2019, Kyiv.

14 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

15 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 09.02.2021, online.

16 Interview, male French police officer, 13.10.2020, online.

17 Interview, male German police officer, 18.09.2020, online.

18 Interview, male German police officer, 18.09.2020, online.

19 Interview, female German police officer, 30.09.2020, online.

20 Interview, male Danish police officer, 14.10.2019, Lviv.

21 Interviews, 30.09.2020, online; 10.10.2019, Odessa.

22 Interview, female German police officer, 14.09.2020, Germany.

23 Interview, male French police officer, 13.10.2020, online.

24 Interview, female German police officer, 14.09.2020, Germany.

25 Interviews, 06.08.2019, Germany; 09.10.2019, Kyiv (B); 09.10.2019, Odessa; 09.02.2021, online; 19.02.2021, online; 30.03.2021, online.

26 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

27 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

28 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

29 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

30 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

31 Interviews, 20.08.2020, online; 28.09.2020, online; 11.03.2021, online (C).

32 Interview, male German police officer, 26.08.2020, online.

33 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 09.02.2021, online.

34 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 09.02.2021, online.

35 Interview, male Danish police officer, 17.07.2020, online.

36 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 12.02.2021, online.

37 Interview, female German police officer, 30.09.2020, online.

38 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

39 Interview, male German police officer, 30.09.2019, Pristina.

40 Interview, male German police officer, 19.11.2020, Germany.

41 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

42 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

43 Interview, male Dutch police officer, 13.10.2020, online.

44 Interview, female German police officer, 14.09.2020, Germany.

45 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.09.2019, Pristina.

46 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

47 Interview, male British police officer, May 2019, Kyiv.

48 Interview, female German police officer, 14.09.2020, Germany.

49 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

50 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

51 Interview, male German police officer, 06.08.2019, Germany.

52 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.09.2019, Pristina.

53 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.03.2021, online.

54 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.10.2019, Kyiv (A).

55 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.09.2019, Pristina.

56 Interview, male Danish police officer, 14.10.2019, Lviv.

57 Interview, male French police officer, 25.11.2020, online.

58 Interview, male Portuguese Gendarme, 02.02.2021, online.

59 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.10.2019, Kyiv (A).

60 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

61 Interview, male French police officer, 25.11.2020, online.

62 Interviews, 30.09.2019, Pristina; 09.10.2019, Kyiv (A); 09.10.2019, Kyiv (B); 10.10.2019, Kyiv; 15.10.2019, Lviv; 30.03.2021, online.

63 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

64 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 10.10.2019, Kyiv.

65 Interview, female Swedish police officer, 09.10.2019, Kyiv (B), see also Interview, 14.09.2020, Germany.

66 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 30.03.2021, online.

67 Interviews, 12.02.2021, online; 19.02.2021, online; 09.03.2021, online; 11.03.2021, online (A); 15.03.2021, online; 30.03.2021, online.

68 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 19.02.2021, online.

69 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 11.03.2021, online (A).

70 Interview, male Swedish police officer, 09.02.2021, online.