The EU’s promotion of transitional justice : External and internal dimensions of a patchwork of policies

Sweeney, James (2026) The EU’s promotion of transitional justice : External and internal dimensions of a patchwork of policies. International Journal of Human Rights. ISSN 1364-2987 (In Press)

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Abstract

This article presents a qualitative analysis of the EU’s approaches to human rights violations in selected states’ ‘troubled pasts’, employing insights from and critiques of the interdisciplinary field of ‘transitional justice’. By viewing the EU’s approaches to troubled pasts through the lens of transitional justice it is possible to trace a complex web of external and internal policies that have been invoked to address them. Whilst in the Common Foreign and Security Policy there is express engagement with the notion of transitional justice, its engagement with its own Member States’ troubled pasts is more obscure, involving creative use of its ‘competences’ on citizenship to pursue policies of ‘remembrance’ as well as contestation over symbolic measures by the European Parliament. That these policy areas would be invoked in the way that they have been is not self-evident, and so by employing a comprehensive understanding of the EU’s complex institutional structure, the article explains both how they were identified and, then, the range of measures adopted through them. This then facilitates a novel and extensive appraisal of the EU’s measures to address the selected states’ troubled pasts through its patchwork of transitional justice interventions.