Reasons and Effects of EU Engagement in the Syrian Crisis

Abstract

Due to the complexity and prolongation, combined with the continued inability of world powers to come to a mutual consensus, the Syrian war has become one of the biggest political challenges of the early 21st century. The war started in May 2011 with Bashar Hafez al-Assad regime’s oppression of local demonstrators. From the very beginning of the conflict, the EU expressed its unwillingness to tolerate Assad’s crimes. EU thus severed ties with Assad by terminating all bilateral agreements and imposing sanctions. A dramatic turn in EU – Syrian relations took place in August 2011 when the EU announced that president Assad has lost the legitimacy to lead the Syrian people due to the violence committed against civilians. Subsequently, another development took place on November 2012 when the EU recognized the Syrian opposition as the legal representative of the Syrian people. Apart from the canceling of bilateral agreements, imposing of sanctions and support given to the “legitimate opposition’’, the EU made notable efforts to convince the United Nations (UN) to adopt sanctions against Syria and to therefore bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Even though the EU has been engaging in the Syrian crisis though only non-militarily means – such as the application of diplomatic force and sanctions to seek a peaceful transition of power in Syria - it has tried to keep its interests on equal footing with countries which are directly militarily involved in the conflict. The purpose of study is to examine the reasons behind EU’s engagement in the Syrian crisis and the resulting relations among them – including the degree of importance of each reason for the EU. Furthermore, this paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the EU’s engagement in respect to its motives. This paper finds that the reasons of the EU’s engagement and its priorities in dealing with Syria are as follows: First, migration wave and terrorism; second, energy interests; and third, humanitarian reasons and the maintaining of peace in the surrounding region. In terms of the effectiveness of the applied measures to solve or alleviate the reasons, EU measures have been partially effective in mitigating the first and third problems, but ineffective with regard the second problem.