Since the Cairo summit in 2000, peace-building, conflict prevention and conflict management have been priorities of the cooperation between the EU and Africa. It is the argument of the paper that the EU increasingly aims at providing security to the African continent by proxy and by not deploying European troops. The proxy is mainly the African Union or to a lesser degree to the continent’s sub-regional organizations.
The paper analyses the policymaking processes, the policy content and the outcomes of the EU’s support to the AU missions in Burundi (2003-4), Darfur (2004-7) and not least the current AMISOM mission to Somalia. It is assumed that the interests of the EU in providing security in Africa have changed over the period and so have the strategies towards conflict management on the continent.
The significant French influence on EU policy-making on Africa represents a special theoretical challenge to the paper. The challenge is how to work theoretically with the strong French focus on its national interests and combine it with the much more complex decision-making situation in Brussels. The paper suggests applying a neo-classical realist framework because of its emphasis on material interests as well as its attention to the significance of ideas (intentional ideas), norms and values in foreign policy-making. Also, this particular framework opens for political-administrative institutions in Brussels and elsewhere to play a special role in decision-making related to providing security in Africa.
