International legal framework for foreign political missions of the European Union

1 Abstract One of the proclaimed goals of the European Union is to contribute to an "effective multilateral system leading to a fairer, safer and more united world". In order to enable itself to achieve these goals, the EU implemented a number of changes in the field of its common foreign and security policy. One of the most apparent elements of this process became its crisis management operations (CMOs). The progressive development of the ESDP, creation of capabilities enabling the EU to conduct military operations, and continuously raising number of military CMOs, point more and more urgently to the need to analyze these developments through the prism of international law. Out of these facts arises also the main question of the thesis: Has the EU's increasing military emancipation been paralleled by the definition of a clear international legal framework? The thesis is divided in five parts. The first chapter provides an overview of the basic characteristics and present status of the ESDP. We argued that the EU in order to achieve its goals has currently a wide range of instruments at its disposal, including an emergency a crisis response system. This system enables the EU to respond to whole spectrum of crisis situations and conflicts, including peace enforcement operations. The EU established respective..