The role of the European Union in the processes to ban cluster munitions : comparing the role of the EU in the Oslo process to create the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the process to reform the convention on certain conventional weapons

At the end of 2008 more than 90 states signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in Oslo that outlawed almost all types of cluster munitions. Among the signatories were 19 of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). The CCM was the product of the so-called Oslo process, which was set up two years before as a reaction to the failure to reform the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and add a new protocol to ban cluster munitions. This process, under the aegis of the United Nations, still continued parallel to the Oslo process and is until today not finished. The attitude of the EU in these two processes was puzzling: on one hand it belonged to the strongest proponents for a new protocol within the CCW, but on the other hand the member states did not act together in the Oslo process. These on the first sight paradox policies raise questions about the role of the EU in multilateral environments like these processes. For instance you may ask the question when and how the member states act in arenas like these together. So this thesis aims to use the role of the EU in the processes to ban cluster munitions as a case study to explain its behaviour in a multilateral arena that deals with matters of perceived national security. Hence the question that is asked is, how the role of the EU in these processes looked like and how it could be explained?