Crisis and Crisis Management in the European Union: The Way towards the Updating of the European Security Strategy

This article deals with the use of concepts of "crisis" and "crisis management" in the European Union documents in the development of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). It analyzes in particular the "status questionis" after the Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy and other related documents adopted at the European Council in December 2008, under French Presidency. These documents do not offer any important change or information and, at the same time, suffer from the lack of conceptual rigor and accuracy of former documents. The article looks at the definition of crisis and crisis management from an academic perspective, and examines how these terms have been used in the documents dealing with security and defense issues in the European Union. It also shows how the academic approach has little to do with the use and meaning of these concepts in EU documents about the ESDP. The Report is, therefore, a lost opportunity to maintain the conceptual rigor, avoiding eventual harmful consequences when the EU designs crisis management tools or plans and develops crisis management operations.