European Union military operations and global security: ambitions and reality

Abstract

In the last twenty years, the European Union (EU) has made notable efforts in improving its military capabilities to react to crises. The Union launched crisis management missions and operations, aiming to play a relevant role in the field of international security. Thirteen military operations and missions were established amongst its overseas action to date. Notwithstanding, the results are questionable, i.e. the positive relationship between what the EU says, and its concrete action in practice. The paper aims to present what is the real role of EU military operations by arguing that although high ambitions the Union’s military interventions are still limited. It is demonstrated by using a model with proxies from inputs to impacts through which I analyse perceptions and intentions and how they have been translated into effective implementation. I used quantitative data combined with certain qualitative remarks collected from primary and secondary sources. It concludes that the EU military operations remain more as ambitions than to project its best features in favour of a better world security environment