Implementing CSDP missions: the daily travails of police experts

Abstract

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.