Small
Peace Research GrantsSMALL PEACE RESEARCH GRANTS
GRANT AWARDEE: Doga Ulas Eralp (Turkey)
EU from a peace project to peacekeeper: EUFOR mission in Bosnia Herzegovina 2005
This
project helps to see if the European Union (EU) is able to bring emancipation to a country whose value system
does not lie necessarily within the Western European polity. It evaluates how helpful the European Union project
has been in helping Bosnia rebuild itself from the structural, social and psychological terror of the civil
war and redefine its domestic sovereignty. This question comes at a crucial time when the EU began to question
the validity of further enlargement. This study examines the transition in post-conflict Bosnia from a state of
semi-domestic sovereignty under the governance of an international executive authority -the Office of High
Representative of the International Community (OHR) - to a state of full domestic sovereignty in the EU
integration process. It helps to answer the question, has the EU intervention helped emancipate the Bosnians?
More than 90 interviews conducted in Brussels and Sarajevo with Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, EU Officials,
representatives from the Bosnian political and civil sector, and representatives from other international
institutions in Bosnia have demonstrated that the EU intervention operates in a very ambiguous manner. A
significant number of Bosnian interviewees have pointed out the need for full domestic sovereignty in Bosnia
whereas the sovereignty issue was not one of the priorities of the EU. The EU representatives tended to focus
on the need for reforms but not on the impact of those reforms in Bosnia. These findings demonstrate that the
EUFOR, EUPM and other EU bodies in Bosnia Herzegovina define their legitimacy through the implementation of
reforms whereas Bosnians tend to legitimize the EU presence in their country vis a vis its impact on the
sovereignty of Bosnia.