Member States Resistance to the EU Operations Centre

Abstract

The decision to create European Operational Headquarters (Ops Centre) was taken by the Council in December 2004. EU Military Staff in Brussels were tasked to set up an Operations Centre that would be able to plan and run a specific operation, in particular where a joint civil/military response was required, and where no national HQ had previously been identified. In spite of an apparent willingness to address the lack of EU military capabilities and give the EU an autonomous capacity of action, the Member States seem to be rather hesitant with regards to the use of the Ops Centre. On March 2012, the Council finally decided to activate the Ops Centre for the first time in order to coordinate and increase synergies between the three CSDP missions in the Horn of Africa. The article looks at how the Member States have/have not implemented the decisions on the EU Ops Centre, and why they have/have not resisted the norm consisting of activating the Operations Centre. After having identified this norm, we study resistance attitudes from the part of the Member States, and then move on to analyse the four hypotheses set out in the introductory article.