European Union Foreign Policy towards the Balkans

Abstract

The countries of the former Yugoslavia1 occupy an important place in the foreign and security policy of the EU. The violent conflicts in the Balkans throughout the 1990s, and the absence of an effective European response, were an important impetus in the evolution of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The experience in the war in Bosnia and the conflict in Kosovo led to an alignment of views among EU member states, most significantly Britain and France, that the EU should have autonomous defence capabilities to respond to future security challenges, particularly those arising from the Western Balkans. Since the end of the conflict in Kosovo and the evolution of CFSP and ESDP instruments, the EU has indeed achieved some success in crisis management in the region: in 2001 EU mediation efforts played an important role in preventing the outbreak of war and led to a relatively peaceful settlement of the crisis in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Starting in 2003 ESDP has taken over tasks of stabilization from NATO through military and police missions in Bosnia and FYROM. A rule of law mission in Kosovo, which is currently in planning and likely to be implemented after the resolution of the status question sometime in 2007, constitutes the most ambitious civilian crisis management operation the EU has undertaken to date both in terms of its size as well as the complexity of the task to be undertaken.