The promotion of peace and prevention of conflict is at the heart of the European Union project and underpins Europe’s engagement with the rest of the world. European peace mediation capacity has been progressively strengthened since the creation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The recent innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS), with its mediation support team and EU Delegations with global reach, have all contributed to enhancing the EU’s mediation capacity. On that basis, it is time to assess the strengths, weaknesses and added value of the existing tools, institutional set and mechanisms, in order to identify possible steps to further improve the EU’s mediation capacity.
In this context, the EPC was involved in a project on ‘The EU as a Peacemaker – Enhancing EU Mediation Capacity’, on behalf of the Irish Presidency of the European Union Council, the European Parliament and the EEAS. The project entailed three closed-door workshops for experts, practitioners and policy makers in Paris, Berlin and Sofia, in April and May 2013, in cooperation with the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) and the Sofia Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), as well as a final, high-level conference hold in Brussels in late May 2013.