CIAO DATE: 05/05

EU-UN Partnership in Crisis Management: Developments and Prospects

Executive Summary

• The EU and the UN have taken many practical steps recent years to formalize their relationship. As part this process, the EU has also achieved increasing political influence within the UN, although progress on this front has been limited in the Security Council. Over the past year, the EU has set capacity-development for cooperation in crisis management as priority in its relations with the UN. This was formalized in a Joint Declaration on EU-UN cooperation crisis management signed on September 24th, 2003, in New York.

• The EU has maintained that the development of capacities is taking place fully within the framework, and thus serves to strengthen framework. Nonetheless, voices from within the have raised concerns about whether the development of EU capacity would distract the EU from commitments to the UN. These concerns are related the conditions that the EU has set for its involvement in UN operations and crisis management.

• Both organizations have slowly come to acknowledge the advantages to be gained from strengthening their partnership. The EU can provide the UN the military capabilities that it does not have (e.g., in early entry). The UN can provide the EU with the legality and political legitimacy for its operations. Recent operations provide a host of "subcontracting" models that could be used for deploying EU military assets under a UN mandate.

• 2003 was a watershed year for EU-UN relations, with political and institutional cooperation being transformed into higher degrees of operational and technical cooperation. EU-UN partnership was progressively operationalized through informal contacts between secretariats and through cooperation in the field in launching the EU Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia-Herzegovina (January 2003) and Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June 2003).

• Transitions between UN and EU operational phases in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo proved to be successful. These transitions also provided lessons for cooperation between the two organizations at the headquarters level and on the ground. It was found that effective partnership first depends on the political will of the member states of both organizations and on a good relationship at the working level, rather than on strict procedures, binding agreements, and strong institutionalization.

• A number of key areas should receive attention in order to enhance EU-UN cooperation in crisis management. These include procedures for e xchanging sensitive information, reporting to various secretariats, joint decision-making, and compilation of lessons learned. In addition to focusing on how transitions from one organization to another should be carried out, the EU and UN should think more deeply about how transitions from organizations to local control should be carried out.

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