The EU's neighborhood policy towards the Southern Mediterranean

The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was launched in 2004, the same year as the ’big bang’ Eastern enlargement was finalized. The goal of the ENP was and still is to prevent the emergence of new dividing lines between the EU and its neighbors. The former President of the EU Commission, Romano Prodi, declared in relation to the preparation of the ENP that ‘a ring of friends should be created’. The relationship between the EU and the neighbors should build on mutual commitment to common values principally within the fields of the rule of law, good governance, respect for human rights, the principle of market economy and sustainable development. Positive conditionality was seen as a means to promote concrete progress demonstrating the effective implementation of political, economic and institutional reforms.

ENP links this kind of conditionality to the notion of ‘differentiation’ that reflects the existing state of relations with each country, its needs and capacities. The ENP, thereby, creates different levels of relations between the EU and the state in question depending on its progress in reaching agreed benchmarks of reform. A kind of variable geometry is, thus, introduced resulting in drawing some Arab Mediterranean states closer to the EU than others. The neighbors that constitute a ‘ring of friends’ are divided into different kind of friends that turn the conceptualization of the ‘ring’ into a ‘twisted ring’. Some friends are good friends as Morocco that in 2008 was granted an advanced status in the ENP because of its willingness to embark on reforms and on co-operation with regard to illegal immigration. Tunisia is as well considered a good friend in spite of its flagrant infringement of human rights. However, Tunisian economic reforms, westernized elite and ‘stable’ regime make it an attractive country to the EU. Tunisia signed the ENP Action Plan in 2005. The Action Plan is a bilateral agreement between the EU and each partner. Algeria is a ‘reluctant neighbor’ and it has imposed many conditions before signing the ENP’s Action Plan. It is able to do so, because Algeria has oil and gas which makes it attractive for Russia, the US, China and the EU member states. Libya, the former rogue state, has come back on the international arena. Although not a member of the ENP, Libya is an extremely important partner to the EU with regard to energy and illegal immigration. However, Libya is very reluctant to be drawn into the ENP.

ENP is defined by the use of bilateralism whereas the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) operates with multilateralism and with the perception of the Mediterranean as one space. The EU Commission has declared that the ENP in no way replaces the EMP. The Mediterranean perceived as one space has never worked, especially because of the unsolved conflicts between the Palestinians and the Israeli and the ‘frozen’ conflict in West Sahara. Hence the ENP’s bilateralism is seen as a means to bypass the regional conflicts. The same goes for the Union for the Mediterranean that was launched in Paris in July 2008.

The ENP’s goal is the prevention of the construction of new dividing lines. However, there is a built–in tension between the declared goal and the ENP’s policy. This is due to the ambiguous relationship between the EU’s self-representation as a norm exporter of democracy and the EU’s threat perceptions of the Mediterranean neighbors. The EU discourse on export of democracy as a means of exporting security is challenged by a conception of the southern Mediterranean space as inherently conflictual. The perceived fear of Islamist terrorism, illegal immigration and organized crime to European member states’ identity and social cohesion has resulted in an attempt at closing down the EU borders a fact that goes against the goal of not creating new dividing lines. Furthermore, this ‘closed door policy’ and the European fear of terrorism has resulted in the perception of security as identical to regime status quo in the southern Mediterranean countries. The perception of the EU as a ‘norm exporter’ is thus tendentially undermined by European threat perceptions. At the same time, the southern Mediterranean regimes have been willing to co-operate with the EU/ENP on Islamist terrorism and illegal immigration because both are seen as threats to regime stability. Hence, the common European-Arab threat perception has reduced the space for opposition to the southern Mediterranean regimes.

The EU-Commission is well aware of these dilemmas. For example, the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) stated in June 2007 in a document entitled Strengthening the European Neighborhood Policy that ‘the shared political commitment must be translated into a more attractive and palpable incentives for the partners, notably in the area of democracy, governance and the rule of law’. In the ENP Action Plans for Morocco and Tunisia from 2005 the need of democratization is underlined. In reality, initiatives of democratization have been reduced to a question of technical expertise, for example purchase of electronic equipment for surveillance of elections.

The ‘Strengthened Neighborhood Policy’ has difficulties in being implemented because the southern Mediterranean regimes are not interested in democracy. They are interested in access to the EU’s internal market, to European investments and to co-operation within the field of immigration and terrorism. Last but not least they want free movement of persons which is a part of the ENP’s goal. The EU visa-policy is highly restrictive but efforts are now been made to soften the restrictions because the EU needs skilled labor.

The EU fears of becoming an empire-builder in North Africa and the Middle East just as France, Italy, Spain and Great Britain were during the European colonial period. In EU statements it is therefore declared that political and economic reforms cannot be imposed from the outside. The reforms must be generated from within the nation–states. When taking this into consideration together with the European staggering between export of security as identical to democracy and security as identical to status quo it is difficult to se how democratization is going to be a top priority with regard to concrete implementation.

The EU’s neighborhood policy towards the southern Mediterranean regimes testifies to the crisis of the EU self representation as an ‘exporter of universal values’. It manifests the obvious difficulties in defining a policy towards the neighbors that have no perspectives of EU–membership. The EU does not possess any sticks towards its ‘new’ neighbors. The EU task for the future will, therefore, demand a definition of what makes the EU a magnetic force for its neighbors.

This commentary was commissioned by the Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) for the Reflection Group on the future of Europe. It was launched in a special session in Brussels on 21 October.