Paper Titles & Abstracts

Since 2003 the EU has launched eleven peacekeeping missions in Africa more than the United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) together. Most of these operations are not standalone operations but build on some kind of inter-organizational cooperation with the UN and AU mostly filling in their capacity gaps. The vast majority of EU missions operate with a very small number of personnel, strict timeline of deployment (clear exit), tight geographical focus and very specialized tasks. Designed in such a way the EU assures political control over its mission mandate and resources used. Therewith the EU avoids well known UN defects such as mission creep, never ending operations, over-buerocratization and defines rather modest and seemingly more achievable objects. However, the disadvantages of the EU's peacekeeping approach are not trivial. While the number of EU operations is truly impressive the EU seems to privilege output over impact. Its operations can only be targeted in support of another actor deploying a more comprehensive mission. Thus despite political control over mandates and resources the impact of EU missions rests primarily on partner organizations. If operations turn out to be too targeted and too small, the impact might be evasive altogether. Small scale operations also pay lip service to the often heralded EU comprehensive approach which is aiming at fostering more horizontal inner EU integration of political, economic, civilian, military and developmental aid programmes. The paper argues that if the EU continues to prefer output over impact its involvement will be considered preposterous. A solution to this problem should be sought in an attempt to draft mandates from the impact perspective in concert with primarily the UN.