This book analyses the European Union’s (EU) approach to peacebuilding in its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions, and explores how this approach impacts the EU’s role in international conflict management.

Peacebuilding carried out through CSDP instruments has become central to the self-conception of the EU as an actor in international conflict management. EU missions and operations have, for the most part, been deployed to promote peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict situations, in particular through capacity-building, reforms and rebuilding of state structures. This book focuses explicitly on the peacebuilding dimension of the CSDP while exploring why and how the EU has adopted peacebuilding in its CSDP actions as a norm and a practice. It analyses how peacebuilding in EU missions is conceptualised, designed, governed and implemented. The book examines the extent to which EU missions and operations reflect a normative and practical commitment of the EU to peacebuilding – that is to say, the extent to which CSDP instruments have been shaped by international peacebuilding norms and EU foreign policy. Drawing on empirical insights from decision- and policymaking processes in Brussels as well as from missions in Mali and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this book offers critical perspectives on the EU’s role as an international peacebuilding actor.

This book will be of much interest to students of European security, EU policy, peace and conflict studies, security studies and international relations.