EU military and civilian crisis management operations: the first six years

The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) was established at the 1999 Cologne European Council summit. Four years later the EU embarked on its first operation - the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM).

To date, the EU has launched both military and civilian crisis management operations, such as police, border control, rule-of-law training and peace-monitoring missions.

This policy brief will give a short description of each ESDP operation and then, if possible, analyse whether the operation succeeded and why the EU became involved in the country. In this brief, the missions are grouped in geographical zones: Europe (Western Balkans, South Caucasus and Moldova / Ukraine), and Asia (South East Asia, Asia and Middle East) and Africa (East, West and Central Africa).