The European Union has claimed conflict prevention as a hallmark of its foreign policy since the Gothenburg programme of 2001. However, it is now widely accepted that the EU’s has often been acting too late for reasons this paper will explore. Effective early warning is dependent not only on mastering epistemic challenges related to knowledge production and learning, but also bureaucratic and political tasks as warnings need to be communicated, prioritised and acted upon. The EU’s strong focus on improving information gathering and analysis contrasts with its reluctance to tackle the cultural, bureaucratic and political obstacles to the effective use of intelligence in EU foreign policy. By studying different parts of the EU’s emerging intelligence and foreign policy community the paper aims to illuminate not only the causes of the performance problems, but also helps to clarify boundary issues between processes of learning, advocacy and power.
