The seminar explores the European Union’s (EU) peacebuilding policy and its intertwinement with its foreign and security policy. Focusing specifically on the African Great Lakes region, it highlights several paradoxes that arise from EU’s security and normative goals. As the paper argues, the EU is ultimately building military-capable states and not so much the good governed states, which represents the spirit of the peacebuilding and of the EU as a promoter of liberal values. The problem is that this practice has the potential to undermine both EU’s security and normative foreign policy goals. Firstly, military and security measures have militarised the region, creating new sources of violence. Secondly, the aim to support military and security self-regulation could imply that the EU is transferring the attainment of security goals to the target states, thus losing some control and autonomy. Thirdly, the military and security-driven agenda represents an abandonment of the good-governance agenda. The paper finally assess the extent to which this practice is effective both for the EU and the region, and how military-capable states could challenge EU’s image as a liberal actor.

Marta Iñiguez de Heredia is Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellow at IBEI. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics. Prior to this position she has taught at the University of Cambridge, the LSE, Queen's University, Rouen Business School, Deakin University and La Trobe University. Her research interests intersect peace and conflict studies, African studies, historical sociology and practice theory in IR. This concerns in particular the practice of "post-conflict" statebuilding and everyday forms of resistance, the interconnection between micro and macro-level political orders, and the analysis of patterns of power during war and peace processes. Current research is focused on EU’s peace building policies in the Great Lakes, the militarisation of peacebuilding and political transitions through the emergence of African social movements.

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