Institutional mechanism of EU peacekeeping

Abstract

The aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which has been going on for more than five years, has led to irreparable losses – the deaths of thousands of our country's defenders and civilians, immensely more people being maimed, tortured and inhumane, deprived of their housing and means of subsistence. The losses of infrastructure, economy and culture of the country are enormous. It is no exaggeration to say that the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state has been questioned, and the political, social, economic, psychological trauma already inflicted by Russian aggression will be felt for a very long time – not for years, but for generations. But the biggest challenge for Ukraine is that the algorithm for stopping aggression and restoring the territorial integrity of the state has not yet been invented. The use of international peacekeeping mechanisms is considered by many Ukrainian and foreign experts to be one of the means of achieving this goal. This prompts an appeal to the study of the institutional mechanism of the European Union's peacekeeping activity, as an organization actively involved in counteracting Russian aggression in Ukraine and having significant peacekeeping experience. The paper demonstrates that the institutional structure of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has evolved for the most part over the last ten years (after the entry into force of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty) and is still partly in the making and cannot be considered as complete. The author argues that the CFSP in general, and in particular the Common Security and Defense Policy, is provided by both intergovernmental and supranational institutions, but decision-making and partly their implementation remain intergovernmental and require consensus on fundamental issues and the achievement of a complex qualified majority in their implementation, while common organs in this area is just of an executive nature.