The EU and Libya: Missing in action in Misrata

Flickr image by adamblang

The EU has run over twenty crisis management operations in the last decade, often alongside the UN. The idea of sending a force into Misrata suggests that a lot of lessons from these previous operations have gone unlearned.

It is nearly two months since the EU Council gave final approval for EUFOR Libya, a military mission to support UN-led relief efforts in Libya and the refugee camps that have sprung up on its borders. The fact that the Council made this decision on 1 April may have been prophetic, as it looks like a bad joke.

The mission has a €8 million budget and a commander – an Italian Rear Admiral based in Rome. But as yet no EU-flagged troops, ships or aircraft have deployed to Libya or its neighbors to help the vulnerable.

At first, most analysts thought EUFOR Libya would focus on assisting Libyan refugees in Egypt and Tunisia. But in mid-April, the humanitarian crisis in the besieged port of Misrata changed the agenda. Ambassadors and EU officials in Brussels talked seriously about using EU troops to get aid into the city.

Germany, having abstained on the UN resolution authorising the use of force against Colonel Gaddafi, indicated it could participate. With an EU Battle Group on standby, the Germans could have moved fairly quickly. But UN officials worried that this risked militarising and politicising their efforts.

The mission could not happen without UN support. EUFOR Libya’s mandate specifically stated that it would only deploy if requested by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), run by former British development minister Baroness Amos. When most Europeans think of the UN, they doubtless visualize its blue-helmeted peacekeepers. But OCHA deals with civilian aid operations, and most humanitarian experts remain deeply suspicious of compromising their neutrality by working with troops of any type.

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