This research intends to explore the reverberations of the colonial experience in the European Union (EU) peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In particular, it aims at reconstructing the link between the European colonial past and the EU, in order to address to what extent such historical heritage is manifested in the discursive practices of EU peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo.Thus, the thesis seeks to answer to the following research question: “How does the EU address the European colonial legacy in peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo?” To do so, the research position itself in a critical conversation with EU Studies and Postcolonial Studies, and mobilises Discourse-Historical Approach influenced by Colonial Discourse Theory as a methodological tool. After having gathered interviews with EU Officials working on peacebuilding policies, having conducted archival research in the Historical Archives of the European Union and having undertaken participant observation at the European External Action Service, the results of this research are mainly twofold. Firstly, this study shows that within EU peacebuilding policy-makers the colonial legacy is hardly addressed. Yet, the EU relies on a dehistoricised regime where selective historical events are mobilised to the objective of legitimising EU peacebuilding actions. Secondly, the research identifies discursive strategies that reproduce colonial discourses in EU peacebuilding policy-making. These strategies, mainly based on racial stereotypes, connote an unchanging order based on a fixed donor/recipient binary. Such pervasive discourses tend to perpetuate dependency, instead of reaffirming an independent peace process that is supposed to be the final goal of EU peacebuilding policies. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La présente thèse de doctorat décrit comment la construction européenne, point de confluence de la démarche politique de Valéry Giscard d'Estaing et d'Helmut Schmidt, a déterminé la poursuite de leur collaboration après 1981/82. Dans ce but, elle se focalise sur les travaux du Comité pour l'Union monétaire de l'Europe, créé à l'initiative de Valéry Giscard d'Estaing et d'Helmut Schmidt en 1986, au lendemain de l'adoption de l'Acte unique européen par leurs successeurs. Quel rôle leur initiative a-t-elle joué sur la constitution du Comité Delors en 1988, chargé d'étudier le projet d'Union économique et monétaire de l'Europe, et, plus largement, sur la mise en oeuvre du traité de Maastricht ? L'analyse, en replaçant la conception européenne de Valéry Giscard d'Estaing et d'Helmut Schmidt dans les débats des années 1980 et 1990 entre approches institutionnalistes et intégrationnistes, économistes et monétaristes, keynésianistes et ordolibérales, ou encore françaises et allemandes, met à jour les enjeux du lobbyisme et de l'intégration économique dans le processus de construction européenne. / The present dissertation describe how the construction of Europe, point of confluence of the political measure of Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, was determinant in the pursuit of their collaboration after 1981/82. In this goal it is focussing on the works of the Comity for Monetary union of Europe, created by Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt in 1986, before the adoption of the Single European Act by their successors. What role their initiative did played on the constitution of the Delors Comity in 1988, charged to study the project of Economic and Monetary Union of Europe and more widly on the execution of the Maastricht Treaty? The analysis, with the replacement of the European concept of Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt in the beginning of the years 1980 and 1990between the approaches institutionalist and integrationist, economist and monetist, keynesianist and ordoliberal, or French and German , reveal the issues of the lobbyist and the economical integration in the process of the construction of Europe.