The EU Programme for the Prevention of Violent Conflicts – the
‘Gothenburg Programme’ – was adopted by the Council ten years ago. EU Special Representatives in many fragile areas have been in a key position to act constructively to prevent conflicts from escalating.
Mediation is widely accepted as ‘an effective and cost-efficient instrument for conflict prevention, transformation and resolution’.56 Despite the multitude of crisis management tools such as the civilian and military CSDP operations and the Instrument for Stability, the EU still seems to lack an active strategy when it comes to preventing conflicts through mediation.
More often than not, it has been one or more EU member states or other European actors that have engaged themselves in mediation processes rather than the EU as a whole. Sweden has worked to raise awareness about mediation tools and how the EU could provide added value in this field. It was during the Swedish Presidency in 2009 that the EU endorsed a ‘Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue Capacities’. This concept defines peace mediation as ‘a way of assisting negotiations between conflict parties and transforming conflicts with the support of an acceptable third party’. The EU’s added value in mediation is underlined with ‘its political and financial weight and its comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and resolution, involving CFSP/ESDP and Community instruments’.57
55 Council of the European Union, Council conclusions on conflict prevention, 3101st Foreign Affairs Council Meeting Luxemburg, 20 June 2011, pp. 26–27.
56 Council of the European Union, ‘Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue Capacities’, Brussels, 10 November 2009.
57 Ibid., pp. 3–4
The Concept underlines that the EU needs to develop arrangements which allow it to respond rapidly to conflict situations in which opportunities for mediation exist. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, EU Special Representatives in the conflict areas, the CSDP missions and Commission Delegations as well as the Presidency and member states’ diplomatic representations should facilitate EU mediation involvement.58
A number of actors – whether member states (such as Finland or Sweden) or non-state actors such as the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) and other peace-building NGOs and think tanks – have encouraged the European Union to enhance its capacities in promoting diplomacy and mediation. For example the CMI notes that
‘advancing the practice of mediation as an acceptable and workable conflict resolution tool for the European Union has been one of the CMI’s core work areas in 2010’.59 This work has been carried out through an EU-funded ‘Initiative for Peacebuilding Project’60, in which the CMI acts as the mediation cluster coordinator. A number of workshops have been organized to sharpen and fine-tune the EU concept on mediation.61 The concept of peace mediation has, in fact, been welcomed in the political arena even though it may have quite differing operational definitions (just like human security).
Following the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS), structural decisions have also been made to strengthen the EU’s capacities. Following the UN example, which established its Mediation Support Unit in 2008, the EEAS has recently established the Peacebuilding, Conflict Prevention and Mediation Unit (albeit very small in size compared to the one in the UN).
Important steps in the policy field have also been taken to consolidate mediation on the EU agenda. In June 2011, the EU Foreign Ministers agreed on the following in the Council conclusions on conflict prevention:
58 Ibid.
59 CMI Annual Report 2010/2011, Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2011, p. 26
60 The Initiative for Peacebuilding is a consortium led by International Alert and funded by the European Commission.
61 CMI Annual Report 2010/2011, p. 26.
The aim of preserving peace, preventing conflicts from erupting into violence and strengthening international security is an important element of the external action of the European Union as laid down in the Lisbon Treaty … Preventing conflicts and relapses into conflict, in accordance with international law, is therefore a primary objective of the EU’s external action, in which it could take a leading role acting in conjunction with its global, regional, national and local partners.62
Moreover, the proactive nature of mediation is noted as the ministers conclude that even though the EU already has a number of conflict prevention tools at its disposal, there is scope for reinvigoration of EU efforts to prevent violent conflicts and their recurrence and that enhancing early warning will enable the EU to work more effectively with partners regarding responsibility to protect and the protection of human rights. Ministers stressed that mediation is one form of early action and engaged themselves to build on the ‘Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue Capacities’ of 2009 and to strengthen the EU’s mediation capacities by ‘providing support and training to mediators and their staff and increase their readiness.’63 The EU ministers also pledge their support to other mediation actors such as local and regional partners as well as relevant non-governmental organisations.
Until now, the EU has not been very active in mediation work.
Work is carried out on an ad hoc basis. In the Kosovo case, for example, a German diplomat, Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, represented the EU in the ‘troika’ which, over the course of a few months, tried to find a negotiated solution to the Kosovo status in 2007. Today a high-level EU civil servant, Robert Cooper, is facilitating talks between Pristina and Belgrade to find mutually acceptable solutions to overcome practical problems that arise from the fact that Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence. No training exists to give the EU mediators the necessary conceptual tools or a framework in which they could proceed.
The fact that it is not easy for the EU to act in a unified manner in the foreign policy field makes the work of a mediator even harder if s/
62 Council of the European Union, Conclusions, 2011.
63 Ibid.
he cannot rely on a strong political back-up from the EU. The Kosovo case is a prime example of a situation in which the EU member states differ in their attitudes towards the independence of Kosovo. Maybe therein lies the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this paper. Are ‘human security’ and ‘mediation’ too soft concepts for the EU? I dare to argue that it is not a question of softness as both concepts are closely linked with the crisis management operations.
However, they are terms that require clear political will from all the member states. The CFSP works in a very reactive mode, attempting to put out forest fires, rather than trying to predict where another one might start next. It is hard, if not nigh on impossible, to get the 27 member states to agree on the necessity to use drastic measures such as a third-party intervention (even if it were only through a mediator) to prevent a conflict from escalating somewhere, where it is not yet fully ablaze and on the evening news. Proactive measures require political will to get the Union engaged as a whole, but that is what often seems to be lacking in the field of the Common Security and Defence Policy.
Recommendations
As the European Union needs to update its Security Strategy (the last one was prepared in the aftermath of 9/11), it needs to take into account the changing nature of the future conflicts and prepare for more effective conflict prevention mechanisms. The EU actors involved in mediation should be trained for the job, as without real understanding of the peace processes that they are engaging in they might, in fact, do more harm than good. In strengthening the EU’s capabilities in the field of mediation, the member states should remember that the mediation tool can be used at different stages of a conflict cycle from conflict prevention to peace negotiations and implementation of peace agreements, as well as peace-building.
Thus, developing the mediation skills of the actual mediators as well as the EU’s mediation support structures would not only strengthen the EU’s ability to act more proactively in conflict prevention, but also strengthen its ability to react more promptly and efficiently to suddenly erupting crisis situations.