Anna Penfrat, policy adviser to the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO), a platform of 37 NGOs involved in consolidating peace and preventing violent conflicts, called on Tuesday 19 June for greater involvement for civil society and local populations in planning the civilian missions under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).
“It is extremely important to ensure that discussions on planning missions are not solely in the hands of the CSDP players (…), but also those of civil society, which has expertise in terms of governance, rule of law, conflict analysis, etc.”, she told Parliament's 'security and defence' committee on reinforcing civilian CSDP. Penfrat argues that to ensure that missions are not counter-productive, powers must be returned to local players, there must be local ownership and an assessment by the local population of the security situation of the country - and this analysis must be central to the mission.
She said that one of the major challenges was to strike a balance between the internal security of the EU and the security challenges of the host states and the population.
Bert Versmessen, Deputy Civilian Operations Commander at the EEAS, highlighted progress in the rapid launch of these missions. “The aim is political, as we wish to increase the EU's ability to respond more quickly to a mandate, which is always a challenge for us”, he acknowledged.
Parliament has set in place a rapid response capability of 30 pre-identified individuals, 22 of whom are currently deployed on missions, with the other eight on the mission support the platform. The Deputy Commander explained that in the case of the mission in Iraq (see EUROPE 11884), it had been partly planned by individuals borrowed from other missions, an experience he described as “positive”. However, he also warned: “we mustn't rob Peter to pay Paul, we must limit [the borrowing of personnel] to the very shortest term. The political objective of a rapid deployment should come at the expense of existing mandates”.
Versmessen also reiterated that at the end of May, the EU had opened a depository of material available to missions and special representatives (see EUROPE 12030). “Interoperability is very important; we will standardise equipment”, he said, to allow teams to move from one mission to the next without having to change materials each mission.
The EU is currently working on reinforcing civilian CSDP missions. On 28 May, the Foreign Affairs Council called for a qualitative and quantitative improvement of civilian CSDP (see EUROPE 12028). Additionally, according to draft conclusions of the European Council of 28 and 29 June dated 19 June, of which EUROPE has had sight, the heads of state or government are expected to welcome the work carried out to reinforce civilian CSDP team and “call for an agreement on a civilian CSDP Compact by the end of this year, thus providing a new EU framework for civilian crisis management in CSDP missions, with ambitious commitments at EU and national levels”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)