Goals for civilian and military capabilities
The Union has no civilian or military capabilities of its own for conducting peace-support operations. Instead, operations are conducted with personnel and equipment that the Member States make available to the Union in each individual case. To ensure that these resources (personnel and equipment) can function together in an operation, and also to gain an approximate idea of what resources can be assembled, EU Member States have drawn up goals for their capabilities.
The types of resources necessary must be determined on a case-by-case basis and depend on the kinds of tasks the operation in question is to have.
Military goals
Regarding the military aspect, the goal of the Union is to be able to conduct peace-support operations that, if necessary, can consist of up to 60 000 troops and last at least one year. The aim is that it should be possible to launch larger military operations of this kind within a few months of when the Council takes a decision on an operation.
It is also the EU's ambition that smaller military forces, called rapid reaction forces, are to be deployable on much shorter notice. In order for this to work in practice, many EU members have offered to be part of a rotating scheme, either on their own or together with others, in which they are responsible for ensuring that a rapid reaction force is standing by during a six-month period.
Sweden led a rapid reaction force, the Nordic Battle Group, with troops also contributed from Finland, Estonia, Norway and Ireland, which was on standby during the first half of 2008.
Read more about the Nordic Battle Group by clicking the link in the left-hand column.
Civilian goals
Regarding the civilian aspect, the Union's goal is to be able to conduct many different kinds of operations. For example, the Union aims to be able to deploy up to 5 000 police officers in peace support operations, up to 200 people who can work with strengthening the rule of law (for example judges and prosecutors), and up to 2 000 people in rescue services operations. The Union is also to be able to send experts in civilian administration, border surveillance, organised crime, trafficking in human beings and human rights.
Based on a Swedish initiative from 2004, the Union now also has the ambition of being able to deploy special civilian rapid reaction teams. These rapid reaction teams are called Civilian Response Teams (CRTs) and are assembled from a list containing the names of 100 civilian experts. These teams can be deployed on 5-10 days notice to gather facts and assess the need for an EU emergency management operation.
Civilian-military cooperation
The EU countries have also jointly drawn up guidelines for how the EU, beginning at the analysis and planning stage, is to design the civilian and military instruments that are intended to be deployed for conflict resolution, and their relation to one another. With its range of different instruments, the EU is extremely well suited for conducting complex operations with several different tasks of both a civilian and a military nature.
NATO resources
Where there is a need, EU-led crisis management operations are also to be able to use certain NATO resources. This mainly involves planning capacity, some military capabilities and command structures. The agreement that exists between the EU and NATO on these issues is often called the Berlin Plus arrangements. Decisions on making use of NATO resources are made on a case-by-case basis.
