The European Union’s peacebuilding action and the liberal peace framework

The European Union (EU) was built as post-World War II peace project. Preserving peace, preventing conflict and strengthening international security is a European Union’s core mandate, as set out in Article 21 of the Treaty of the European Union. Many researches have explored the EU’s peacekeeping action. However, little has been researched so far about the EU’s peacebuilding action, and the conceptual framework that underpins it. In this document, I focus on the peacebuilding, peacemaking and conflict prevention actions of the EU (labelled collectively as “peacebuilding”). I aim to understand if and how the EU has a favorite approach to peacebuilding, and whether this has evolved over the past two decades. To do so, I use the liberal peacebuilding framework as a basis, with its three main trends: the conservative, orthodox and emancipatory approach. With this as an analytical framework, I analyse the EU’s discourses, policy documents, and its actions. Does the EU focus on strengthening the Westphalian model by supporting security, state-building, rule of law in a centralized and top-down approach? Or rather, does the EU focus mostly on promoting just and durable societies with a localized, bottom-up approach? Or could this be a mixed approach? If so, can the various trends of liberal peacebuilding within the EU coexist and reinforce one another, or does the coexistence of these models generate contradictions or disconnects? This research draws its conceptual framework from the analysis of pioneers of the Peace Studies field and founders (Galtung) and those who have contributed to the Liberal Peace concept (i.e. Doyle, Lederach, Paris). I also draw from the conclusions of the researchers who have challenged and turned away from a conservative approach of liberal peacebuilding, and contributed to a new concept of hybrid emancipatory peacebuilding (i.e. Richmond, Autesserre). The primary data on the case study is a series of policy document and statements issued by the EU with regards to its external action, as well as of a review of official documents outlining the existing peacebuilding mechanisms and funding instruments. I also use my empirical experience of a decade working for a peacebuilding organisation that implements EU funded peacebuilding actions. To answer the research questions, Chapter one the reader through a brief intellectual history of the concept of democratic peace and liberal peace. I introduce the key elements of three main approaches of liberal peacebuilding: the conservative, orthodox, and the emancipatory peacebuilding frameworks. Chapter two brings in our case study, the European Union. In this chapter, I explore the main policy developments that brought about a “peacebuilding external action” framework of the EU since the early 2000’s, as well as the evolution of the peacebuilding discourse. Chapter three is a deep-dive in the EU’s peacebuilding action. I take the reader through a tour of the main peacebuilding instruments and tools. I map each of the actions vis-à-vis the liberal peacebuilding spectrum and analyse whether they fit under the conservative, orthodox, or the emancipatory liberal peace labels. Chapter two and three demonstrate that the EU’s approach to peacebuilding spans across the full liberal peacebuilding spectrum. It also shows that EU’s action leans more on conversative-orthodox side of the liberal peace paradigm. Yet, it appears that elements of an emancipatory approach to peacebuilding have increasingly become present within the EU peacebuilding policy documents, actions and approach to peacebuilding over the past decade. Chapter four uses two concrete example and looks into some of the challenges that emerge from the coexistence of the three liberal peacebuilding models.The localisation agenda of the EU highlights some of the challenges the EU can face in connecting the dots between what it says it wants to achieve, and the practice of truly emancipating peacebuilding. We see that the EU is at times ill-equipped to meaningfully include local stakeholders in its peacebuilding actions. We shed light on the extent of the structural changes that would be required in order to truly “walk the talk” in implementing an integrated, multi-dimensional, multi-level approach to peacebuilding. The “Train and Equip” project of the European Peace Facility serves to illustrate how the various approaches to peacebuilding might at times conceptually clash with one another. I conclude as follows: the EU has a large scale of actions in its peacebuilding toolbox which in theory enables it to deliver a comprehensive and integrated approach to peace, conflict and security. But the practice is not as simple as it as it seems: truly connecting theory and practice might be impossible without clear guidance and requirements to those who, ultimately, deliver peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas. And for sure, there will time and again be conceptual clashes between the various peacebuilding approaches that the EU embraces. Therefore, I conclude by recommending that the EU takes it to the next level and dares to engage in an inclusive process of elaborating an explicit peacebuilding concept, and a clear peacebuilding strategy.