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ECFR and Egmont host a seminar entitled ?Can the EU deal with crises??

On the 10th March ECFR partnered with the 'Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations' in Brussels for a half day seminar on the civilian military future of EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The successful event attracted a crowd of approximately 60 people from the EU's security and foreign policy circles. The first session featured Jean Marie Guéhenno, Member of the ECFR Council and former Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at the UN and Peter Feith, the EU's Special Representative in Kosovo, debating the future of CSDP and whether the EU is equipped to deal with crises. The second session, entitled "Can Europeans create soldier-diplomats? National capacity-building and EU policy", included a pan-European panel of Juan Garrigues from the Office of the Spanish Prime Minister, Louise Perrotta from the UK's Stabilisation Unit and Peter Van de Velde, Deputy Director for International Security Policy, Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the event the report's authors observed a strengthening consensus on the validity of their diagnosis of EU's problems with civilian peace operations. Despite agreements on this and the fact that too much decision making takes place in Brussels, discussions highlighted that divisions persist amongst member states as to what CSDP missions are for and where they should go. In their report on civilian crisis management, Daniel Korski and Richard Gowan's overarching assessment of EU's challenges conclude that: 1) EU member states break promises and significantly under-staff key international missions, 2) Crisis missions still rely on the ‘Bosnia-template', ignoring reality on the ground and 3) Turf wars between the European Commission and the European Council weaken missions.