In Search of a Trademark: EU Civilian Operations in Africa

Abstract

Is the European Union about to develop a strategic culture? Analysis of past and present civilian missions under the European Security and Defence Policy in Africa and the assessment of the corresponding institutional setup in Brussels, including the Lisbon Treaty, does not deliver evidence for such a geopolitical quality. Most of the European Union member states continue to be preoccupied with the practical puzzle of the EU's internal build-up. At best the former colonial powers, especially Paris and London, seem to have an idea of a more far-reaching role of the EU on the African continent (see Libya). In the security field the European Union remains a collection of states with no common defence and not much collective, let alone unified, political will. It also lacks the ability to mount the resources for its declared international ambitions. Without these prerequisites for any development of a strategic culture Brussels is condemned to stay at the margin of an increasingly competitive multipolar world and to simply hope for some influence in individual cases of intervention.

Notes

The build-up of an EU intervention capability for crisis management started with the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) at the European Council meeting in Helsinki in December 1999. See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/Helsinki%20European%20Council%20-%20Annex%20IV%20of%20the%20Presidency%20Conclusions.pdf (accessed 7 May 2011).

ESDP interventions started with operation CONCORDIA in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in January 2003. Three months later the first operation was sent to Africa: ARTEMIS DR Congo. Petar Petrov, ‘Early Institutionalisation of the ESDP Governance Arrangements: Insights from the Operations Concordia and Artemis’, in Sophie Vanhoonacker, Hylke Dijkstra and Heidi Maurer (eds), Understanding the Role of Bureaucracy in the European Security and Defence Policy (European Integration Online Papers 2010, Special Issue 1, Vol. 14, http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2010-008a_htm), pp. 1–22.

The term ‘civilian power’ (Zivilmacht) was first used to describe the European Community, including its European Political Cooperation, by François Duchêne in 1973. François Duchêne, ‘Die Rolle Europas im Weltsystem. Von der regionalen zur planetarischen Interdependenz’, in Max Kohnstamm and Wolfgang Hager (eds), Zivilmacht Europa – Supermacht oder Partner? (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973), pp. 11–35.

Karen E. Smith, ‘The End of Civilian Power EU: A Welcome Demise or Cause for Concern?’, International Spectator, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2000), pp. 11–28.

Robert Kagan, Power and Weakness: ‘Why the United States and Europe See the World Differently’, Policy Review, No. 113 (2002). Kagan's argument is built around the notion that Europe's relative military weakness compels it to use fundamentally different foreign policy tools than America.

Gisela Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet, ‘The Big Member States’ Influence on the Shaping of European Union's Foreign, Security and Defence Policy', in Gisela Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet (ed.), The Future of the European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy after Enlargement (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 2006), pp. 25-53.

William Easterly, ‘How the Millennium Development Goals are Unfair to Africa’, Brookings Global Economy and Development Working Paper 14, Washington, DC, November 2007.

http://vlex.com/source/partnership-agreement-acp-ec-signed-cotonou-23-june-2000-revised-luxembourg-25-june-2005-2009

Federica Marzo, ‘More Trees have Fallen … but the Forest is Still Growing: Recent trends in African politics’, OECD Development Centre Policy Insights No. 63, Paris, 2008.

‘A Secure Europe in a Better World’, European Security Strategy, Brussels, 12 December 2003, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf

Ibid., p. 1.

Ibid., pp. 2-4.

Ibid., p.10.

Ibid., p. 9.

Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson (eds), Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Barbara Lippert, ‘The Big Easy? Growth, Differentiation and Dynamics of EU-enlargement Policy’, in Udo Diedrichs, Anne Faber, Funda Tekin and Gaby Umbach (eds), Europe Reloaded: Differentiation or Fusion? (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2011), pp. 238–268.

Gunilla Herolf, ‘National and Supranational Actors in European Foreign Policy’, in K.Y. Nikolov (ed.), Adapting to Integration in an Enlarged European Union (Sofia: Bulgarian European Community Studies Association [BECSA], 2008), pp. 312–333.

Tony Chafer and Gordon Cumming (eds), From Rivalry to Partnership? New Approaches to the Challenges of Africa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011).

Ibid.

The following description of the civilian ESDP missions to Africa is based on the information given by Thierry Vircoulon, Caty Clément, Benedict Franke and Damien Helly in Giovanni Grevi et al. (eds), European Security and Defence Policy. The First 10 Years (1999-2009), (Paris: EU ISS, 2009).

The legal basis was the Council Joint Action 2004/847/CFSP of 9 December 2004, and Council Joint Action 2005/355/CFSP of 2 May 2005.

The legal basis is the Council Joint Action 2007/405/CFSP of 12 June 2007.

The legal basis is the Council Joint Action 2008/112/CFSP of 12 February 2008.

Contributing states at the start of the mission were Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. Later the UK, Denmark and Romania reinforced the team and non-EU states – including Canada, Turkey, Mali, and Angola – were also added to the list.

Support had come from the European Commission, which gave €7 million for technical assistance, training facilities and communication systems; and from member states, which gave €2.4 million for training and equipment. See Thierry Vircoulon, ‘EUPOL Kinshasa and EUPOL RD Congo’, in Grevi et al., European Security and Defence Policy, (note 20) p. 223.

Contributing states at the start of the mission were Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden. The following non-EU states were added to the mission: Angola, Canada, Turkey, and Switzerland.

Contributing states at the start of the mission were Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the UK.

The projects included the separation of the chain of payment from the chain of command; a census of the Congolese Army; advisory support to the 2009 Revised Strategic Plan for Army Reform; and a multilateral approach to SSR.

The legal basis is the Council Joint Action 2008/112/CFSP of 12 February 2008.

Contributing states were France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.

Other AU operations were undertaken in Burundi, the Comores, the Central African Republic and Somalia. Regarding Somalia, the EU Council followed a request by the AU and amended its Joint Action on AMIS on 23 April 2007 to include a military support component for the setting up of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISON). In May 2010 EUTM Somalia was launched as a military training mission taking place in Uganda, where Somali security forces are already being trained, which also facilitates the coordination of the EU action with AMISOM. The mission is conducted in close coordination with EU partners, including the TFG of Somalia, Uganda, the African Union, the United Nations, and the United States of America.

The legal basis is UN Security Council Resolution 1769 of 31 July 2007.

The main legal basis is Council Joint Action 2005/557/CFSP of 18 July 2005.

Member states contributing to the EU Support for AMIS were Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

The legal basis is Council Joint Action 2005/556/CFSP. Pekka Haavisto from Finland was appointed as the EU's first Special Representative (EUSR) for Sudan. He was followed by Torben Brylle in April 2007.

Sten Rylander from Sweden acted as Special Envoy for Darfur between early 2004 and December 2005.

For the exact figures see Nicoletta Pirozzi, ‘EU Support to African Security Architecture: Funding and Training Components,’ Occasional Paper No. 76, EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris, February 2009.

‘The Africa-EU Strategic Partnership: A Joint Africa-EU Strategy’, http://www.africa-eu-partnership.org/partnerships/africa-eu-strategic-partnership

Reinhardt Rummel, ‘Die EU in Afrika – Regionale Stabilisierungsinterventionen im lokalen und internationalen Kontext’, in Walter Feichtinger and Gerald Hainzl (eds), Krisenmanagement in Afrika (Vienna: Böhlau, 2009), pp. 51–72.

Seth Appiah-Mensah, ‘The African Mission in Sudan: Darfur Dilemmas’, African Security Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2006), p.19.

Markus Derblom, Eva Hagström Frisell and Jennifer Schmidt, ‘UN-EU-AU Coordination in Peace Operations in Africa’, Swedish Defence Research Agency Report No. 2602, Stockholm, November 2008.

‘Despite multilateral initiatives for information exchange on security assistance and cooperation programmes like the Africa Clearing House and the AU Partners Technical Support Group in Addis Ababa, possible synergies were not always utilised and donor efforts often overlapped leading to unnecessary duplications, which increased the transaction costs for the AU and further strained its absorption capacity.’ See Benedikt Franke, ‘The European Union supporting actions to the African Unions missions in Sudan (AMIS) and Somalia (AMISON)’, in Grevi et al. (eds), European Security and Defence Policy (note 20), p.259. The author adds the following telling case: ‘A good example is the fact that even though both NATO's Strategic Airlift Coordination Centre and the EU's European Airlift Centre are co-located in Eindhoven each dispatched its own liaison team to the DITF in Addis Ababa, thereby unnecessarily multiplying demands on AU staff and facilities.’

Jackie Cilliers, ‘The African Standby Force. An Update on Progress’, ISS Paper 160, Pretoria 2008.

Sébastien Bergeon, ‘Stratégies africaines - Vers une européanisation de la politique de sécurité et de défense de la France en Afrique?’ Défense Nationale et Sécurité Collective, Vol. 63, No. 1 (2007), pp. 55–62.

See Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards, ‘The Strategic Culture of the European Union: A Progress Report’, International Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 4 (July 2005), p.802

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/00200-r1.en0.htm (accessed 9 November 2011).

Gunilla Herlof, ‘Overcoming National Impediments to ESDP’, in K Brummer (ed.), The North and the ESDP. The Baltic States, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, (Tallinn: EVI Publications, 2007), available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0C54E3B3-1E9C-BE1E-2C24-A6A8C7060233&lng=en&id=94522, pp. 17–29.

http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/ (accessed 9 November 2011)

The EUISS later produced a volume which picks up the task of strategic thinking ahead. See Álvaro de Vasconcelos (ed.), What Ambitions for European Defence in 2020? (Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2009), available at http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/What_ambitions_for_European_defence_in_2020.pdf. Other experts have asked for an official strategic document. See Christos Katsioulis et al., ‘The European Union needs a Defence White Paper. A Proposal’, Berlin, 2010.

For a comprehensive record see Agnieszka Nowak (ed.), ‘Civilian Crisis Management: the EU Way’, Chaillot Paper No. 90, Paris, June 2006.

Carmen Gebhard, ‘The Crisis Management and Planning Directorate: Recalibrating ESDP Planning and Conduct Capacities’, CFSP Forum, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2009) pp. 8–14.

‘Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy – Providing Security in a Changing World’, S407/08, Brussels, 11 December 2008, available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/reports/104630.pdf (accessed 9 November 2011).

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘The ESDP and Civilian Rapid Reaction: Adding Value is Harder than Expected’, European Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 299–321.

ESS (note 10), p.14.