The EU's integrated approach to crisis response: learning from the UN, NATO and OSCE

Abstract

The EU aims at being a prominent global crisis responder, but its member states act also through the UN, NATO and OSCE to achieve both short-term stabilisation by military and/or civilian means, and longer-term conflict prevention and transformation. By comparing the policy approaches of these four multilateral organisations to conflicts and crises, this contribution shows how the broad principle of comprehensiveness has been developed to fit different institutional logics, thus leading to divergences in approach. Distilling findings from empirical research conducted in the framework of the Horizon 2020-funded EUNPACK project in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Mali and Ukraine, this chapter synthesises lessons about varying levels of the EU's and the other organisations' conflict sensitivity, effective multilateralism, value-based approach and application of the principle of local ownership in theatre.