Emerging norm and rhetorical tool: Europe and a responsibility to protect

European governments, parliaments and civil societies belong to the most important supporters of a 'responsibility to protect' (R2P). However, despite a shared positive attitude towards R2P and co-ordinated diplomatic efforts, major European governments and therefore the European Union (EU) have never reached a consensual position on R2P. Based on 47 expert interviews and a review of official government documents, the article analyses the positions of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the common EU institutions across a series of critical junctures of the R2P debate between 2005 and 2013. The authors find that Paris and London agree with Berlin and Brussels that R2P requires longer-term multilateral norm-building. Yet, while Germany stresses military restraint and civilian crisis prevention, France and the UK continue to view R2P through their preexisting traditions of a droit d'ingerence and the 'doctrine of humanitarian intervention', respectively. These differences are largely due to diverging strategic cultures based on different historical lessons on the use of force. Brussels' efforts to co-ordinate a common EU position have been constrained by these diverging positions.