Between Capacity-Building, Dependency, and EU Integration: EUFOR Althea, CSDP, and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Path to Security Provision

This paper aims to analyse and evaluate the EU’s CSDP presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), with a focus on the evolution of EUFOR Althea and its impact on enhancing BiH’s security situation, its cross-sector effects, and ultimately in transforming BiH into an independent security provider that contributes to the CSDP. Operation Althea’s mandate is centered around transitioning BiH from being a ‘security consumer’ towards being a ‘security provider’. With the Operation carrying the mandate for both executive and non-executive functions, its presence has proven to be effective – with BiH armed forces having been successfully trained to participate in CSDP missions abroad. Building BiH’s military and security capacities at state level is closely connected with the broader aim of state and institution-building, as well as safeguarding the rule of law and democracy. As such, successful intervention in the field has the capacity to yield invaluable positive spillover effects. However, Althea’s stabilising effects, similarly to that of the OHR, are double-edged. Already in 2005, the Venice Commission posited that effective state and institution building are intrinsically linked to a reduction of the interventionist role of international actors. The Operation’s continued presence in BiH reflects insufficient security sector reform and unpreparedness of BiH to stabilise itself internally. As such, Operation Althea’s mandate represents a slippery slope of perpetuating BiH’s dependency on international intervention. To assess the EU’s intervention in BiH, Operation Althea must be situated in the broader context of other CSDP missions to the country, as well as their interaction with the SAA, Framework Participation Agreement, and EU accession conditionality. For the former, the lifespan of the highly contested CSDP Police Mission to BiH, EUPM, will be evaluated to extract lessons learned from the Mission’s linkage of police reform to constitutional reform, and to understand the factors in the decision not to extend its mandate in 2012 (opting to replace EUPM with police-related support programmes such as EUPA4BiH and the deployment of Frontex agents). This paper contributes to existing literature by offering a socio-legal analysis of EUFOR Althea that systematically links CSDP operational practice with EU accession conditionality, demonstrating how prolonged security assistance can simultaneously enable capacity-building and entrench dependency in a candidate state. As such, the research is centered around the question: in light of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s particular role as a candidate state receiving the support of EU CSDP missions, what are the legal and political obstacles to the country’s full alignment with and contribution to the CFSP? The methodology is centered on an analysis of the legal framework, grounded in a literature review (1995-current), and complemented by interviews of relevant experts and actors at the international and state level.