PCE research seminar: ‘Local Contestation against European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX)’
Speaker: Ewa Mahr
When: Wednesday 22 June, 15.30
Where: Spiegelzaal
This paper covers the reasons behind the local contestation against EU civilian rule of law missions in the countries of their deployment. Using the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) as a case study, it demonstrates how the normative aspects, the embedded values and the effectiveness of EU missions are perceived and reflected back to the EU by their recipients.
In particular, it investigates how the EU’s two opposing principles of liberal peacebuilding and conflict management, jointly with the mission’s operational difficulties, are the source of the local contestation against the mission. Local contestation is understood as activities against the EU civilian missions which are a) public and b) carried out in order to make a claim on them.
The paper claims that the local contestation is mainly fuelled by (1) conflicting sovereignty claims by the majority Albanians and minority Serbs; (2) understanding of sovereignty by parts of society as entailing exclusive authority; and (3) dissatisfaction with the mission’s effectiveness.
By addressing the mission from a bottom-up perspective – that of the local actors – the paper underlines the limitations of EU policies in the post-conflict countries, which attempt to simultaneously incorporate two conflicting principles.
While the conflict management is rooted in a still prominent security paradigm, the liberal peacebuilding necessitates the alignment of the missions’ objectives with those of the local population. Moreover, none of these two approaches assumes space for local contestation.
