Third workshop on Strengthening CSDP-JHA Cooperation

Making civilian CSDP more joined up is one of the core commitments of the Civilian CSDP Compact to strengthen European civilian crisis management. The CoE seeks to contribute to the strengthening of cooperation between civilian CSDP and Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). To this end, it is conducting a series of three workshops.

The third and last workshop of this series on Strengthening CSDP-JHA Cooperation: ‘Harmonising Narratives to Bolster Cooperation’, organised in coordination with the Netherlands and Portugal as Chairs of a one of the so called informal NIP clusters (working groups of EU Member States) and with the EEAS’ Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC), took place on 5 July 2022. The focus of this workshop was on the operational level between EU Member States and the CSDP missions: how can the EU Member States benefit from seconding personnel to civilian CSDP missions and how do missions benefit from the expertise of the international secondees?

65 participants from 20 EU Member States and their respective line ministries and security services, EU institutions and other stakeholders exchanged good practices, highlighting the added value of coordination and cooperation between civilian CSDP missions and EU Member States´ law enforcement and judicial services. This workshop also placed an emphasis on the need for convincing arguments in order to increase secondment of personnel from the national Justice and Home Affairs agencies to civilian CSDP missions: What are the benefits of seconding personnel to missions abroad for the national internal security? How can the expertise gained abroad benefit the seconding agencies at home? How can line ministries work together with (national) JHA actors to increase secondments to civilian CSDP missions?

(Former) mission secondees shared their insights from a national perspective: good practices were presented by speakers from Denmark, The Netherlands, and Lithuania as well as civilian CSDP missions EUAM Ukraine and EUCAP Somalia. This was complemented by a contribution by the European External Action Service (EEAS) on the role of so called “mini-concepts” in strengthening civilian CSDP-JHA cooperation.

Following this third workshop, the CoE will summarise the outcomes of all three workshops, suggesting a way forwad on hot to strengthen aforementioned civilian CSDP-JHA cooperation.

 

Related on the Knowledge Hub:

Workshop Report: Strengthening CSDP-JHA Cooperation. The Operational Level.

Strengthening CSDP-JHA Cooperation: Building a Harmonised Narrative - Presentation of Results and Follow-up