For long, its lack of military means served to single the European Union out as a "civilian" or "normative power". However, since 2003 twelve EU military operations have been launched. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of all EU military mission so far, this article seeks to establish how these missions have evolved over time and how they have affected the character of the EU as an international actor. For this purpose, the article outlines four ideal-typical conceptions of the EU's international identity and operationalises them along two underlying dimensions: justification (the purpose of military operations) and policy-embeddedness (the coordination between military means and other foreign policy instruments). Analysing the military operations along these two axes, the article suggests that the EU has been evolving towards a "Liberal Power" identity, as is reflected in a shift from value-based to utility-based justifications, while military operations have at the same time become more embedded in the EU's overall foreign policies.

The notion of European integration has been contested from its very start. In the interwar period many ideas were floating around on how to shape European unity. These interwar Blueprints for Europe have to be understood in the context of conflicting and contradictory emotions of enmity and amity. This article looks at the emotive vocabulary of the canonical text of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s <em>Pan-Europa. </em>It applies an emotion discourse analysis, using Koselleck’s notion of “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation”. As such it shows the connection between the understanding and use of time and emotions in discourse—thereby demonstrating the necessity of “reading” the blueprints of European integration as highly normative and moral claims on the design of this European order.

Drawing upon an advocacy coalition approach, this paper confronts the competing hypotheses in the case of European Union Force (EUFOR) Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), as the EU's longest running military operation (since 2004). On the basis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with policymakers and politicians, this paper concludes that the evolution of EUFOR Althea has been primarily the result of the power politics of different coalitions, but there have also been a few instances of learning.

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