Europe and the European Union

This chapter analyses acceptance and implementation of the norm of the responsibility to protect by the European Union and its member states. Although European states have accepted the norm, and supported its development at the UN, progress in implementing it has been patchier. The chapter looks at the degree to which there has been programmatic, bureaucratic and operational implementation of the norm by the EU in particular. It finds there are wide divergences in Europe over the use of military force with regard to pillar 3 of R2P, a lack of EU bureaucratic capacity and will to implement pillars 1 and 2 of R2P, and confusion over the clarity of the norm which has led to the conflation of conflict prevention with mass atrocity prevention.