Resumen de The EU comprehensive approach to crisis management missions and operations

María del Carmen Márquez Carrasco

• Over the years, a distinctive EU approach to security has emerged, which is characterized by a broad, multidimensional and comprehensive notion of security. This approach is characterized by its focus on the treatment of root causes of instability and insecurity and its clear preference for international co-operation and partnership and compliance with the rule of law. The promotion and support of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law has been a key component of the EU's approach to security policy. Human rights, democracy and the rule of law are seen as the basis of security and threats to these elements constitute the roots of instability.

  The current context of insecurity and conflict led to the adoption of the European Security Strategy (ESS) in 2003 and a report on its revision in 2008 that incorporates the concept of human security. Furthermore, an EU comprehensive approach to crisis has been adopted to coordinate all EU instruments and actors involved. In view of the reluctance to recognise human security as the framework for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations, the implementation of the EU comprehensive approach to crisis is seen as some form of endorsement of the concept of human security in a more flexible manner. More than ten years after its adoption, the strategy has been updated with the adoption of the European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) in June 2016. The EUGS has changed the focus of previous security strategies to new priorities of the EU external action starting with the security of Europeans and of the Union, yet it continues to foresee the adoption of an integrated approach to conflicts and crisis through which "the EU will foster human security".

  EU crisis management has become a broad-ranging activity that not only cuts across all forms of EU external action but also concerns the internal security agenda. EU crisis management implies a combination of security-related activities and Commission-led programmes. Crisis management goes beyond the CSDP to include the European Commission and morece recently Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) agencies.

  This paper aims at analyzing the EU comprehensive approach to crisis and conflict in order to assess how it can be improved with regards to crisis management missions and operations to strengthen support to human rights policies.