The EU’s Pursuit of Legitimacy Through the Creation of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers

In 2011, the Council of Europe reported on allegation of crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes in Kosovo. Following this report, the EU created a task force to conduct investigations into these allegations, and by 2014 the EU task force had determined there was sufficient evidence to warrant prosecutions. At this point, a variety of choices were plausible for how to prosecute these crimes: existing institutional mechanism (e.g., ICTY, EULEX) or by creating a new institution. In the end, a new institution was created—the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), or a hybrid international criminal tribunal. Given the presence of other choices, why was the Kosovo Specialist Chamber created? This paper explores this question by examining the role of the EU and its pursuit of its legitimacy through the creation of the KSC. We will explore how the EU was crucial to the establishment of the KSC, and why the EU’s pursuit of its own legitimacy led it to push for the creation of a new institution. This paper contributes to literature that studies institutional choice by highlighting the role of legitimacy. Moreover, the paper makes an important empirical contribution by examining the politics behind the creation of the KSC.