The Early warning and Conflict prevention Capability of the Council of the European Union

This working paper provides an overview of existing early warning and conflict prevention bodies and instruments
within the Council of the EU (the Council), depicting the state of affairs before the enactment of the Lisbon
Treaty.

It also identifies a number of possible gaps in and limitations of the Council’s early warning and conflict
prevention architecture so as to inform further research. A complementary overview of the early warning and
conflict prevention capacity of the European Commission was carried out by Saferworld.

Jointly, the two documents constitute the first phase of a larger research project under the Initiative for Peacebuilding - Early Warning.