Towards an EU Peacebuilding Strategy: The Effects of the Lisbon Treaty on the Comprehensive Approach of the EU in the Area of Civilian Crisis Management

Abstract

While the EU has subscribed to the Comprehensive Approach (CA) on the rhetorical level, it struggles to effectively apply its unique toolbox and substantial resources, and that particularly in the area of peacebuilding. Hence, numerous actors call for an EU peacebuilding strategy to define and prioritize the Union's objectives and to improve the coordination and effectiveness of its instruments across the peacebuilding activities, i.e., civil and military capabilities, institutions and operations.This article shows that such a strategy is both necessary and doable. First, it defines the underlying concepts: strategy and peacebuilding. Second, it analyses the EU-settings in which peacebuilding concepts, instruments and resources are located and identifies factors that regularly spoil strategic coherence within EU peacebuilding. Third, by applying strategy analysis to the context of peacebuilding this paper develops a definition of a peacebuilding strategy and describes how such a strategy could improve the effectiveness of the EU's CA. It shows that successful strategies are based on strategic coherence: (a) strategies, able to deal with the existing diversity of concepts, institutions and resources, and (b) that strategic planning, capability development and implementation form a coherent process.