The European Union, Conflict Management, and the Normative Illusion

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has recently become the most active conflict manager, currently deploying more operations than any other organisation. There has been a total of 13 operations of military nature from 2003 to 2019, deployed in Europe and in Africa. The discourse at the level of the European Union emphasizes not only the security of its members but also the importance of humanitarian norms. Do these norms drive the deployment of EU’s military operations? There is literature that recognizes the relevance of norms, suggesting that these factors may indirectly or even directly have a driving impact. On the contrary, I suggest that there is no normative driving impact. To be precise, I argue that power distribution and exposure to conflicts are the fundamental conditions driving the deployment of military operations by the EU.