The EU’s External Relations: Institutions, Policies and Engagement in Conflict-ridden Areas

Abstract

This panel focuses on the international role of the EU in conflict-ridden regions, drawing lesson from the EU's broader neighbourhood. The collection of papers touches upon various policy areas, including Enlargement, European Neighbourhood Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy, and brings together a great number of cases studies from Southeast Europe but also the Mediterranean and the Middle East. As such, contributions capture long-existed security issues (e.g. Kosovo, Cyprus, Palestine, Western Sahara) but also more recent developments, such as in Ukraine or Libya, and the new challenges that they pose to the international role of the EU. Drawing on a range of interconnected conceptual debates of international and European politics, including conflict resolution, liberal peace, state-building, statehood and sovereignty, the panel contributes to the understanding of the challenges and opportunities that exist for the EU's international role, especially in conflict-ridden areas, today and the way we can theorise them. Crucially, the panel explores developments at both the EU and local level. At the EU level, papers address challenges in the coordination between different actors (e.g. the European External Action Service and the Commission), issues of institutional capacity, the process of policy-making and how it is impacted by differences in the interests of member states as well as tensions between supranational and intergovernmental elements, but also process of socialisation and how they influence the EU’s approach to conflict and security. At the local level, papers look at a variety of factors, such as the influence of ethno-politics or the role of non-state actors, and how they mediate the EU’s efforts for conflict management or resolution. As such, the panel suits perfectly the ‘European Union’ section, by offering a comprehensive discussion of a range of EU external policies and, in particular, the way conflict and old and new security upheavals mediate institutional dynamics and supranational- intergovernmental tensions, policies and the engagement of the EU in a continuously challenging neighbourhood and world politics in more general.

Title	Details
The EU and State-building in the Southern Neighbourhood: Insights from Palestine and Libya	View Paper Details
Limits of Europeanisation and Liberal Peace: The EU and Cyprus	View Paper Details
International (non)recognition and territorial (un)differentiation practices in the EU’s engagement with the Western Sahara conflict	View Paper Details
The European Union and Contested States: Sovereignty and Conflict in World Politics	View Paper Details
CSDP Missions in highly politicized peace processes: Lessons from EULEX Kosovo to Ukraine and beyond	View Paper Details