The EU steps on the international podium

In January 2003, the EU embarked on its first crisis management mission abroad. The EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUPM) would last seven years and had a staff capacity of 540 at its peak. The EUPM aimed to establish and train a multiethnic police service and to assist local authorities in conducting large-scale crime investigations. By building and strengthening key institutions in the criminal justice sector, the mission sought to facilitate a return to normalcy in a war-torn region (Merlingen 2009).

In the summer of 2003, an EU military mission landed in the Congo. Militias had killed hundreds of civilians. Thousands sought protection from the UN mission (then dubbed “MONUC”). When the UN battalion could not protect the terrified population, the UN called on the EU to send forces. The EU mission (ARTEMIS) of approximately 2000 soldiers drove the militias out within weeks and handed control back to the United Nations.

Introduction: the prospect of transboundary crises

The previous chapters described how the EU has been building capacity to coordinate a joint response to overwhelmed member states and other disaster-stricken areas; moreover, they demonstrated a growing capacity to send civil–military missions to worldwide hot spots. This chapter focuses on a different type of crisis, one that affects multiple member states and, when left unaddressed, can threaten the political fabric of the European Union. This chapter documents the EU's efforts to deal with transboundary crises (Boin and Rhinard 2008).

These crises find their origin in the very essence of what the EU seeks to achieve. Since 1957, the European Union has prioritized the “four freedoms”: the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor across borders (Art. 12 EU Treaty). Physical and technical barriers were lowered, regulations were harmonized or made compatible, and critical infrastructures were tied together. In the 1980s, member states agreed to create a single economic market in Europe. The integration of Europe has made EU member states increasingly vulnerable to what could once be considered “foreign” or “local” problems in distant places (OECD 2003, 2011; Missiroli 2005; Sundelius 2005).

The surprising emergence of the EU as crisis manager

There are few reasons to expect the European Union (EU) to play a role in the management of crises and disasters. The response to such events has traditionally been the remit of national governments. What could the EU – often depicted as a bureaucratic talk shop – possibly add to the efforts of national and local governments?

Quite a bit, as this book reveals. The member states have invested the EU with a significant amount of what we refer to as “crisis management capacity.” While often reluctant to transfer more authority to Brussels, member states have shown a sustained willingness to enhance the EU's crisis management capacities. After a large-scale crisis or disaster, member states routinely call for additional EU capacities to coordinate, link, or integrate their response capacities. Few European Council meetings conclude without some call for more crisis cooperation.

The EU has indeed become more visible as a crisis manager in recent years. Consider the following examples:

• In January 2010, a massive earthquake struck Haiti. The EU coordinated the humanitarian response of its member states, sent a police force of 200 Europeans, and created a relief fund for the devastated island.

• In the early months of 2011, popular revolts broke out across northern Africa and the Middle East. The EU sent its High Representative, Catherine Ashton, to newly liberated countries to assess how the EU could help their democratic development. The EU imposed an arms embargo on Libya and discussed the imposition of a no-flight zone. Meanwhile, the southern member states appealed to the EU for a coordinated response to the feared exodus of young Arabs seeking a better future on the European continent.

• In the spring of 2011, a vicious E. coli (EHEC) epidemic in Germany caused the deaths of over 40 people. After Germany informed the European Commission through the EU’s Early Warning and Response System, the Commission’s DG Sanco (Directorate General for Health & Consumers) took the lead in coordinating an EU-wide investigation and control measures.

• […]

Introduction: the gradual ascendance of the Civil Protection Mechanism

The earliest efforts to create joint crisis management capacity in the EU arguably date back to the 1970s. A set of now mostly forgotten disasters – who remembers Seveso and Amoco Cadiz? – prompted Commission officials to build what today is known as the Civil Protection Mechanism. This oddly titled organizational capacity helps member states deliver on the promise, captured in the Solidarity Clause of the Lisbon Treaty (cited above), of swift cooperation among national civil protection services in responding to natural or human-made disasters.

Since the first cautious steps were taken in the late 1970s, civil protection has emerged as a European policy domain – a “new European political space” (Stone Sweet, Fligstein, and Sandholtz 2001). The EU has in place a set of procedures and instruments that allow member states to coordinate and pool their resources in the face of disaster. Today, civil protection is explicitly mentioned in the Lisbon Treaty, it is a recognized EU policy area, and its products, as we will see, are increasingly “consumed” across the world.

From “mapping” to assessing EU crisis management capacities

This book documents the emergence of the European Union as a multifaceted crisis manager. It describes the many crisis management capacities now available at the supranational level in Europe, including unique forms of cooperation, surprisingly effective decision procedures, organizations with special competences, and even a degree of operational capabilities.

It is true that these capacities are scattered across the EU's institutional landscape. We had to search for some, as they were not designed with crisis management in mind. Some capacities are brand new; others are tried and tested. It is also true that some capacities have worked better than others.

Taken together, we can say that the EU has developed a wide range of tools that enable the Union to play a role in a joint response to a variety of crises. The combined resources of 27 member states and the distinct competence the EU has developed over the years have made the EU a unique actor in the international crisis arena.

Why write a book about the European Union as a crisis manager? The response to safety and security threats falls in the traditional domain of the nation state. What role could the EU possibly play when it comes to dealing with floods, electricity breakdowns, epidemics, or terrorist attacks?

Our search for an answer to this question began some ten years ago. In those post-9/11 days, two of the authors met over coffee at Leiden University's Department of Public Administration. One (a crisis management researcher) had been studying how national governments were preparing for the possibility of a smallpox attack (a major worry in those days). He had understood that small countries like the Netherlands could never cope with such an event and would rely on cooperation with its neighbors. Surely, he asked, the European Union would play a dominant role in the response to a smallpox outbreak?

The other author (an EU researcher) found this a silly question. He explained that the EU was never intended or designed to “manage crises.” True, the EU did send military and civilian missions to foreign hot spots and there was financial support for humanitarian aid in disaster-stricken countries. But the EU did not manage crises or disasters on the European continent. Yet the question lingered: what role could the EU play in response to a large-scale crisis or disaster?