Clearly, the mission needs to be accurately planned and it may take time but the core problem is related to the fact that such a mission is now in jeopardy due to the Ukrainian crisis. The European leaders are reasonably concerned about Russian pressure on Eastern Europe but it seems they have forgotten that the crisis in Central African Republic is still going on.

This is kind of a provocative statement but the concerns behind it are quite real. Despite EU’s funding support amounting to over 165 million euros[2], African Union’s peacekeepers and French soldiers deployed in late 2013 still need EU military support because, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared last week in the High-Level Meeting with the EU’s and African Union’s representatives on CAR crisis, «the situation remains highly volatile»[3].

Therefore, the European Union must find a way to face both the Ukrainian and CAR crisis in order to live up to the role of international security provider that European leaders have been trying to gain during the last twenty years, bearing in mind that over 2 million people lives are at stake and that there’s no room for further delay.