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Research Project

Good intentions, mixed results – A conflict sensitive unpacking of the EU comprehensive approach to conflict and crisis mechanisms

The EUNPACK project unpacks EU crisis response mechanisms, with the aim to increase their conflict sensitivity and efficiency.

Themes

  • Security policy
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • The EU

Events

By combining bottom–up perspectives with an institutional approach, EUNPACK will increase our understanding of how EU crisis responses function and are received on the ground in crisis areas.

This entails exploring local agencies and perceptions in target countries without losing sight of the EU’s institutions and their expectations and ambitions. It also entails examining the whole cycle of crisis, from pre-crisis, through crisis, and into post-crisis phase.

EUNPACK analyses two gaps in EU crisis response. First, the intentions–implementation gap, which relates to 1) the capacity to make decisions and respond with one voice and to deploy the necessary resources, 2) how these responses are implemented on the ground by various EU institutions and member states, and 3) how other actors – local and international – enhance or undermine the EU’s activities. Second, the project addresses the gap between the implementation of EU policies and approaches, and how these policies and approaches are received and perceived in target countries, what we refer to as the implementation–local reception/perceptions gap.

Our main hypothesis is that the severity of the two gaps is a decisive factor for the EU’s impacts on crisis management and thereby its ability to contribute more effectively to problem-solving on the ground. We analyse these gaps through cases that reflect the variation of EU crisis responses in three concentric areas surrounding the EU: the enlargement area (Kosovo, Serbia), the neighbourhood area (Ukraine, Libya), and the extended neighbourhood (Mali, Iraq, Afghanistan).

The results of our research will enable us to present policy recommendations fine-tuned to make the EU’s crisis response mechanisms more conflict and context sensitive, and thereby more efficient and sustainable.

See more information on the project's home page.

Publications

Blog posts

European Café Debates and Policy Forums

Newsletters

Project Manager

Morten Bøås
Research Professor

Participants

Pernille Rieker
Research Professor
Mateja Peter
Former employee
Kari M. Osland
Director
Francesco Strazzari
Former employee
Bård Drange
Former employee
Henriette Ullavik Erstad
Former employee

Articles

Articles
News
Articles
News

How can the EU improve its response to crises?

Researchers within and beyond Europe have been studying the EU's approach to conflict and crises. Here's what they found out.

  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Conflict
  • Fragile states
  • Migration
  • Insurgencies
  • International organizations
  • The EU
Articles
News
Articles
News

EUNPACK Final Conference: synthesising three years of research on the EU’s crisis response

Conflict sensitivity in focus as the three-year NUPI-led research project on the EU’s crisis response (EUNPACK) organised a final conference in Brussels in March.

  • Security policy
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Migration
  • International organizations
  • The EU
Articles
New research
Articles
New research

Five paradoxes EU must address to effectively respond to crises beyond its borders

Engaging in ongoing conflicts brings with it a set of extraordinary challenges.

  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU
News
News

PODCAST: Is the EU ready to handle the major challenges it is facing?

Ivan Krastev reflects on the crises that has shaped the EU for the past decades.

  • Diplomacy and foreign policy
  • Europe
  • The EU
Ivan Krastev at NUPI
News
News

The EU in the Middle East - how to prevent terrorism and violent extremism?

That was the topic for the project EUNPACK's contribution to the MERI Forum 2018.

  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Conflict
  • Insurgencies
  • The EU
Bildet viser paneldeltakerne Roman Blecua (EUs ambassadør i Irak), Steven Blockmans (CEPS), Tine Gade (NUPI), Kamaran Palani Mohammed (MERI), Morten Bøås (NUPI), Dlawer Ala’Aldeen (MERI)
News
News

Unpacking EU crisis response

How does the EU respond to crises? This is the key question posed by a group of NUPI researchers who have succeeded in the competition for funding within the world’s largest research programme.

  • Development policy
  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU

New publications

Publications
Publications
Report

EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...

Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordination. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mechanisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.

  • Security policy
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • Security policy
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Plugging the capability-expectations gap: towards effective, comprehensive and conflict-sensitive EU crisis response?

Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the European Union (EU) has spent considerable time and energy on defining and refining its comprehensive approach to external conflicts. The knock-on effects of new and protracted crises, from the war in Ukraine to the multi-faceted armed conflicts in the Sahel and the wider Middle East, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But has the EU has managed to plug the capability–expectations gap, and develop an effective, comprehensive and conflict sensitive crisis-response capability? Drawing on institutional theory and an approach developed by March and Olsen, this article analyses whether the EU has the administrative capacities needed in order to be an effective actor in this area and implement a policy in line with the established goals and objectives identified in its comprehensive approach.

  • Security policy
  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • Security policy
  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • International organizations
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Report

Working paper on implementation of EU crisis response in Mali

This paper offers a critical review of the EUTM and EUCAP in Mali, arguing that this is another example of international interventions that may be well-intended, but that end up producing very mixed results on the ground. One reason for this is the gaps between intentions and implementation and between implementation and local reception/perceptions. Whereas the first gap points to mismatches between EU policy intentions and what effect the implementation of these policies actually have (see for example Hill 1993), the latter gap reveals the inability of an international actor to both understand how key concepts such as ‘security sector reform’ and ‘border management’ are understood on the ground as well as translating its own policies and Brussels’ developed mandate into policies that makes sense for people on the ground (Cissé, Bøås, Kvamme and Dakouo 2017).

  • Europe
  • Africa
  • Conflict
  • The EU
  • Europe
  • Africa
  • Conflict
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Report

Implementation of the EU’s crisis response in Ukraine

The objective of this paper is to reflect on the received and perceived EU crisis response in Ukraine, paying specific attention to the security and humanitarian sectors, among the key areas for the EU since the beginning of the crisis/conflict. This research focus is in line with EUNPACK Task 2, aimed at analysing how the EU and its member states are implementing its crisis response on the ground throughout the conflict cycle. Three core assumptions underpin our research focus in this paper.

  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • The EU
  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

EU-Supported Reforms in the EU Neighbourhood as Organized Anarchies: The Case of Post-Maidan Ukraine

How does the EU and its member states organize their support for reforms in the countries of the EU Neighbourhood? Building on organization theory research on reforms as sets of loosely coupled ‘garbage can’ processes, we conceptualize the ENP induced reform processes as an organized framework connecting the reform capacities of not only the EU institutions but also EU member-state governments. We apply this approach to Ukraine in the post-Maidan period. We focus on the interplay between EU-level reform capacities and the capacities of two member states highly active in Ukraine, namely Germany and Sweden. As this case illustrates, the current approach provides a complementary perspective to mainstream approaches to the study of the EU’s external governance as it offers partial explanations of how organizational processes may impact on the efficiency of reforms promoted by the EU and its member states in the neighbouring countries.

  • Security policy
  • Regional integration
  • Europe
  • The EU
  • Security policy
  • Regional integration
  • Europe
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Report

Working Paper: Comparing the EU’s Output Effectiveness in the Cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali

This part of the overall report (Deliverable 7.1) on the EU’s crisis response in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali compares the findings of three comprehensive cases-studies. The analytical focus is on the output dimension of EU policy-making that is the output of decision-making of the policy-making machinery in Brussels. Thus, the analysis is confined to the choices and decisions made regarding the EU’s problem definitions, policy goals, strategies and instruments – both on a strategic and operational level; thus policy implementation or impact will be analysed as next steps in following project reports (D 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4).

  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • The EU
  • Comparative methods
  • Europe
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Conflict
  • The EU
  • Comparative methods
Publications
Publications
Report

Best practices in EU crisis response and policy implementation

This report has two aims. First, to take stock of how the Europen External Action Sercvice (EEAS) and the Commission have institutionalized lessons-learned mechanism. Second, to discuss the extent to which these mechanisms and practices incorporate the EU’s ambitions for a ‘conflict-sensitive’ and ‘comprehensive’ crisis-response approach. In this sense, this report will serve as a point of departure for case-study research to be undertaken within the framework of Work Packages 5–7 of the EUNPACK project, on whether there is a gap between policy and practice with regard to institutional learning.

  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • The EU
  • Europe
  • Conflict
  • The EU