Welcome to the CoE Knowledge Hub!

This Policy Brief is based on CMC´s latest report, which examines seconded experts’ perceptions and experiences of how their home agencies view civilian crisis management secondments, and whether they have been able to make use of knowledge gained during their secondment.

This report is the result of an impact evaluation of the civilian CSDP missions in Afghanistan (2007-2016), Niger (2012-2024), and Mali (2014-). Tying together their findings, the researchers outline six primary factors undermining the effectiveness of all three missions and recommend practical solutions for current and future missions to enhance effectiveness. It provides crucial insights for both mandate development and implementation.

This policy brief by the Clingendael Institute frames the changing status quo of EU CSDP in the context of ongoing security crises. The authors discuss how the war in Ukraine, the series of coups d'état in the Sahel, and spillover from the Israel-Hamas war are affecting CSDP and recommend policy changes for CSDP policy and missions moving forward.

The report presents findings of a case study on incentives and disincentives of women employees within the Belgian Integrated Police considering international civilian crisis management missions as part of their career.

This infographic provides an overview of the 2023 Civilian CSDP Compact. It can be shown to people who are new to civilian CSDP and to those who do not know much about its foundational document.

This report analyses Specialized Police Teams (SPTs) deployed in UN missions meant for capacity building of local forces, in contrast with individually seconded officers and formed police units meant for enforcement. It first describes the benefits of SPTs in their results-focused capacity building, then goes into the challenges faced in their composition and deployment due to issues of supply, funding, and consistency before concluding with recommendations for the Secretariat, missions, and MS. As Civilian CSDP missions also move forward with Specialised Teams of a similar kind, the benefits, flaws, and proposed solutions for the UN provide good lessons to take into account.

This research article discusses how COVID-19 temporarily created a radical change in the lessons learnt process of CSDP. Using the theoretical framework of Communities of Practice (CoPs), in this case the agencies, EEAS directorates, missions, and other workplace communities and venues for interaction within the CSDP architecture, the researchers find that the pandemic decreased the political contestation between CoPs and created a high-engagement environment where lessons were freely shared among CoPs as they were learned, with PCM (then-ISP) as the knowledge broker.

This report from the European Court of Auditors covering September 2021 to April 2023 reviews the performance of the EEAS in its role as coordinator of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) between its own HQ, the EU delegations, the Commission, and the Council of the EU. It finds that the EEAS coordination is mostly effective, but is hampered by specific weaknesses including inadequate information sharing tools, untimely reporting and feedback, and staffing insufficiencies.

This document has been produced by the European Centre of Excellence for Civilian Crisis Management (CoE) and serves as a report from the CoE's Civilian CSDP Autumn Forum on the topic "Implementing deliverable number 3 under the Civilian CSDP Compact". It took place on 19/20 October 2023 at the Spanish Representation to the EU in Brussels, under the auspices of the Spanish Council Presidency. This report can be used by EU MS as well as the EEAS to inform their further discussion – and eventual decision-making – to what extent a scalable and modular approach shall be used to make civilian CSDP more agile, flexible, effective and efficient.

This SIPRI-policy paper reviews the first compact and how the new compact builds on the former. It highlights that the Member States did not deliver on their commitments in the first Compact regarding secondments while acknowledging the usefulness of the initiative. Three main commitments are discussed in this paper: increasing national contributions, raising the share of seconded personnel to 70% and promoting women’s representation. The paper concludes by making suggestions for the design of the review process of the new Compact. As a review, it is interesting for everybody who is working on secondment to civilian CSDP missions and on the implementation of a meaningful review process of the new Compact.