Peace and security

Peace and security: central to EU development policy

Addressing causes of conflicts (poverty, disease, lack of governance and rule of law) is an essential first step for the EU to help promote peace and development.

EU development work uses non-military means to support the peaceful resolution/prevention of armed conflict through negotiations, demobilisation, demilitarisation, etc. It also supports:

good policing
the rule of law (availability of judges, lawyers, etc.)
civil administration (establishing a group of experts),

civil protection (experts and emergency teams which can be mobilised at very short notice).

Conflict prevention is backed up through:

trade policy
development policy
cooperation and association agreements
social and environmental programmes
humanitarian assistance (ECHO)
cooperation on justice and home affairs.

In post-conflict states, the EU supports disarmament and arms-control measures in the framework of the UN Conference on Disarmament, relating to:

small arms and light weapons
conventional weapons
biological weapons
chemical weapons

It also supports international efforts to ensure nuclear safety.

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