The main purpose of this thesis is to provide an understanding of the EU’s approach to peacebuilding in its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations. The thesis explores why EU missions carry out mainly post-conflict peacebuilding tasks and whether the shift towards peacebuilding is about a substantial change of EU norms. The research analyses how peacebuilding in CSDP actions is framed, designed and operationalised through the complex decision- and policy-making processes within the CSDP. In particular, the thesis assesses how the EU’s approach to peacebuilding in the CSDP was influenced by the UN’s conceptualisation of peacebuilding and how the EU has developed its own distinctive approach to peacebuilding. While looking at the examples of civilian missions and military operations in Mali and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the thesis provides insights into the operational dynamics of peacebuilding under the CSDP.

The thesis argues that CSDP missions and operations reflect a normative and practical commitment of the EU to international peacebuilding. CSDP actions deployed in post-conflict scenarios follow the logic of liberal peacebuilding strategies while aiming at the stabilisation, reconstruction and building of the institutions of a functioning state, in particular the military, police and justice sectors. The EU pursues its peacebuilding activities under the CSDP in a comprehensive, case-specific and geopolitically strategic way as demonstrated by case studies of Mali and Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, the research reveals that, although the shift towards peacebuilding in CSDP actions has been underpinned by a change of normative approaches, driven by the reform process of the UN peacekeeping, it also reflects the EU’s preferences, pragmatic limits and capability-expectation gaps in crisis management.