Order-Maintenance in Kosovo: The EU as an Increasingly Comprehensive Police Actor?

This article presents an examination of the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) with a focus on the policing area of order-maintenance. It argues that while much scholarly attention has been given to the EU’s role in crime-fighting, less has been said about its increasing involvement with order-maintenance, which is a central element of policing. EULEX, which is the EU’s largest civilian mission to date, has been involved with a range of executive tasks such as riot control as well as the reforming and training of local police in Kosovo; this article argues that the Mission’s activities contribute to all of the functions that comprise the policing area of order-maintenance. The EU’s increasingly comprehensive involvement with policing activities is shown to significantly contribute to the Union’s ambitions as a security actor. However, the case of EULEX demonstrates that only some aspects of the EU’s aims as an actor in policing have been fully achieved in practice.