In less than 10 years after the birth of European Security and Defense Policy, the EU has developed into a leading player in multidimensional peace operations. ESDP crisis management missions put a special emphasis on police and judicial reform programs – reflecting the EU’s long-standing ambition to promote the rule of law.

The growing number of ever more ambitious missions has presented the EU with serious challenges. As the High Representative Javier Solana pointed out, operations needed to be established “even before our doctrines and structures had caught up completely.” Moreover, police and judicial reform missions are particularly complex, not only in terms of achieving the desired transformations in third countries, but also in terms of coordinating a wide range of actors across all “pillars” of the EU. Already when launching the first ESDP police mission in 2003, the Council stressed “the importance of the EU learning lessons from all ESDP operations.” However, we currently lack a comprehensive analysis of knowledge management, doctrine development and learning in the ESDP civilian crisis management apparatus.

Project Objectives

Accordingly, the two-year research project Learning in EU Peace Operations sought to fill this gap by providing an analysis of organizational learning in EU civilian crisis management operations. The project addressed the following questions: How have the EU’s institutions for knowledge management in civilian crisis management evolved? How has the EU (not) learned from past experience and new knowledge? Which factors facilitate or hinder organizational learning?

Conceptually, the project employed a multi-disciplinary framework for analyzing organizational learning in international bureaucracies. The project built on GPPi’s previous work on organizational learning in the UN peace operations apparatus while tailoring its approach to the special features of the EU. Empirically, the study was based on in-depth research in both Brussels and theatres of operation, particularly in the Balkans.

Project Outputs

The project had two main outputs. The first was a piece in the European Journal of Public Policy that makes the case for a public administration turn in the study of EU civilian crisis management. The second was a forthcoming article in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding that traces the evolution of the institutional apparatus supporting EU civilian crisis management.