On 15 November, SIPRI held an event in Brussels to launch the report ‘New Compact, Renewed Impetus: Enhancing the EU’s Ability to Act Through its Civilian CSDP’.
In May 2023, European Union (EU) member states adopted a new compact to strengthen the civilian Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It doubles down on some of the key commitments of the previous compact by refining them and raising the level of ambition for capability development and increasing women’s representation, among other things. According to the new SIPRI Research Policy Paper, the success of this compact will depend to no small extent on whether member states can translate these commitments into tangible results. The paper provides policy recommendations on how EU members states and the European External Action Service (EEAS) can support the implementation of the compact and adjust the compact review process to align better with the new commitments.
SIPRI Senior Researcher Timo Smit presented the research on the eve of the Annual Review Conference of the Civilian CSDP Compact—the first such conference for the new compact—which was held in Brussels on 16 November. The presentation was followed by reflections from a panel of experts (composed of representatives from the EEAS, civilian CSDP missions, the European Centre of Excellence for Civilian Crisis Management and the think tank and research community) and a lively and frank discussion with the audience. The conversation covered, in detail, the new civilian CSDP missions recently deployed by the EU and the novel aspects of their mandates, in the context of the new compact and the evolving role of civilian CSDP.
The event was held in collaboration with the Permanent Representations to the EU of Belgium and Spain. The research presented by SIPRI was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
About SIPRI’s work on peace operations and conflict management
Peace operations and conflict management have been core elements of SIPRI’s work since the end of the cold war. As part of that work, SIPRI has been collecting comprehensive, reliable and authoritative data on multilateral peace operations since the early 1990s. The data is available in the SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database.
The data includes statistics on personnel, country contributions, fatalities and budgets for multilateral peace operations conducted by the United Nations, regional organizations or alliances, and ad hoc coalitions of states. The data in the database is used to survey and analyse significant trends and shifts, measure their impact on current policy issues and provide evidence-based background briefings and policy recommendations to multilateral organizations, troop-contributing countries, donors and the public.
Source: SIPRI News
