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The Union for the Mediterranean: A Genuine Breakthrough or More of the Same?
Abstract
The new French scheme for a Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), officially inaugurated on 13 July, has stirred up a great deal of controversy inside the EU. Even in its watered-down form, the initiative promises to relaunch the stalled relations between the two sides of the Mediterranean in the context of the Barcelona Process. Though vulnerable to all manner of external shocks linked to the multiple inter- and intra-state conflicts around the Mediterranean, the Sarkozy plan is a welcome move to a greater degree of “co-ownership” through the institution of a joint presidency. Of great importance in the interest of overcoming at least some of the problems that have bedeviled the Barcelona Process is further “decentring” of Euro-Med politics away from Brussels and more comprehensive trade opening by the EU.
... Thus Sarkozy's idea sought to project France into the limelight of international politics and to recover its former status as a world leader by offering a new foreign policy direction 4 . After considerable negotiations and bickering within the EU, the original idea was diluted and scaled down 5 to what on 13th July, 2008 was established in Paris by representatives of 43 states and the European Commission (EC) as the UfM -to replace the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (ENP) (Holden, 2011;Bechev and Nicolaidis, 2008). The substantial modification to the original idea and the scaling down of its political significance is reflected in the evolution of the name and initials -from UM (or UPM in French versions) to UMed to the final UfM (Balfour, 2009;Gillespie, 2008). ...
... Significantly, the UfM involves a joint Secretariat based in Barcelona which is responsible for the implementation of projects in six priority areas 7 (Holden, 2011). Whereas some of the projects identified are not necessarily new and have been on the agenda in one form or another since the 1990s, the bottom up approach being used may provide the much need breath of freshness in Euro-Mediterranean policies and relations (Bechev and Nicolaidis, 2008). The UfM is yet to fulfil its potential due to the unrest in the Arab region and the economic downturn across Europe. ...
In the current economic downturn across Europe, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) like many of the EU’s policies towards the Mediterranean has failed to deliver on its initial promises. Using the framework offered by Historical Institutionalism (HI) thinking, this paper traces the beginnings of the idea of a ‘Mediterranean Union’ to Sarkozy’s speech in Toulon in 2007. The HI perspective shows the changes and continuities embodied by the UfM in contrast to the grandeur vision first conceived by Sarkozy. The argument is that by building on certain legacies of the past, the idea of a ‘Mediterranean Union’ became locked-in to a path that was difficult to reverse due to the increasing socio-economic and political cost. Due to the compromises in the EU and current economic crisis, the future of the UfM remains uncertain and only time will tell whether it will be relevant or has to be replaced.
... These initiatives introducing (in the case of the East) or reshaping (in the case of the South) a multilateral/regional dimension have attracted a new academic interest (see e.g. Bechev and Nicolaïdis 2008;Hillion and Mayhew 2009: 11-16;Weber 2010: 84-90) with a view to analyzing "horizontal governance structures" (Weber 2010) launched by the EU. However, owing to the fact that these initiatives are recent and, to some extent, still under construction, there has been no detailed assessment of their institutional functioning to date. ...
A new institutional framework was designed under the Eastern Partnership and it has been progressively established over the past two years to frame the increasingly close relationship between the EU and its Eastern neighbours. This working paper provides an early assessment of the Eastern Partnership’s institutional functioning. It focuses on the multilateral track (thematic platforms and panels, participatory initiatives, flagship initiatives) which for the first time gathers all six Eastern partners and the EU at various levels of representation and in different arenas. The EaP’s multilateral track is thus an attempt to develop a multilayered and participative institutional framework based upon a logic of socialisation.
An examination of the ‘governmental track’ highlights however a discrepancy between levels of cooperation. While panels are assessed very positively and foster links both among Eastern partners and with the EU, other formats, including platform meetings, do not appear to favour joint ownership of the policy process. Another weakness is the current lack of synergies between various institutional formats under the multilateral track. Overall the paper identifies three potential sources of tensions in the EaP functioning:
- EU member states’ uneven engagement in the policy process: while Western European member states’ participation in the multilateral track is weak, their involvement is needed to turn the Eastern Partnership into a EU-wide foreign policy;
- Partner countries’ different level of involvement in the multilateral track, which is perceived by some of them as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ exercise;
- The combination, in the multilateral track, of a logic based upon joint ownership, inclusiveness and socialisation with some elements reflecting a more hierarchical approach and limiting participation.
... 33 In terms of the structural underpinnings of the UfM, the way it was supposed to rejuvenate the idea of partnership looked more like a regression from the EMP than an improvement on it. 34 It introduced the idea of a joint presidency, with a European and an Arab head of state serving side by side, along with a new secretariat to be located in Spain. In theory these arrangements were supposed to give the initiative a higher profile than the EMP by elevating the partnership to the intergovernmental level. ...
107 D uring the last seven months, area studies and thus academic dis-ciplines covering Middle East politics were exposed to substantial criticism, mainly by Western media, for their failure to predict what was, in fact, unpredictable, namely the fall of Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and his Egyptian counterpart, Hosny Muba-rak. At the same time, both print and audiovi-sual media provided platforms for an impres-sive and somewhat inflammatory display of reactive policy prescriptions by both Arab and Western scholars, as well as by a considerable number of self-proclaimed experts. Interest-ingly, apart from being purely normative, these recommendations mainly focused on domes-tic politics, above all in Tunisia and Egypt, and the steps to be taken ahead of potentially free and fair elections, as well as to some extent on the civil war in Libya and the pros and cons of NATO's military engagement there. To a Throughout the first seven months of the Arab Spring, starting with the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on December 17, 2010, the EU clearly revealed itself as both an actor and spectator by resorting to both activism and passivism in a seemingly erratic fashion. Against this background and based on the EU's recently adopted Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean, this article aims at understanding this dualism more precisely and shedding some light on the EU's rather anachronistic foreign policy behavior in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in recent months. The article identifies five dichotomies, all of which contribute to the situation in which the EU continues to be torn between being a relevant political actor in the MENA region and a simple spectator that continues to be overwhelmed by local and regional political developments.
... In particular, see articles by Schimmelfennig (2008) on the Western Balkans and Turkey, and Lavenex (2008) on the European neighbourhood policy. See Gillespie (2008) and Bechev and Nicolaidis (2008) for an overview of the Mediterranean Union and analysis of both the potential and pitfalls inherent in this initiative. ...
... In particular, see articles by Schimmelfennig (2008) on the Western Balkans and Turkey, and Lavenex (2008) on the European neighbourhood policy. See Gillespie (2008) and Bechev and Nicolaidis (2008) for an overview of the Mediterranean Union and analysis of both the potential and pitfalls inherent in this initiative. ...
... It would however signal a return to what some at least believe was the vision of the 1990s. This would include the rehabilitation but also rethinking of the EMP, which is already happening courtesy of the UfM (Bechev and Nicolaïdis, 2008). ...
The need to redefine the European Union’s relations with neighbouring countries in the southern Mediterranean and Eastern
Europe has become critical in light of the EU’s most recent enlargement and the institutional reform process now underway.
This paper explores the main instruments of the EU’s external policy: the “integration without accession” principle of the
European neighbourhood policy (ENP) and the idea of a “special relationship” proposed in the Lisbon Treaty. As the ENP and
the Reform Treaty appear somewhat ambiguous and vague, the authors suggest “decentralised integration” as a new paradigm to
craft the “special relationship” between the EU and its neighbours.
... It would however signal a return to what some at least believe was the vision of the 1990s. This would include the rehabilitation but also rethinking of the EMP, which is already happening courtesy of the UfM (Bechev and Nicolaïdis, 2008). The main disadvantage of the scenario at hand is that while resolving the south vs. east tension it would introduce greater institutional complexity in the EU's relations with the neighbourhood, making it difficult for the Union to elaborate and pursue a coherent strategy. ...
The article investigates the institutional and policy choices regarding the EU's relations with the countries and regions covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). It juxtaposes the notion of special relationship inaugurated by the Lisbon Treaty to three models for organizing relations with proximate countries: pre-accession, the European Economic Area (EEA) and association. The convergence-access paradigm is found to be the basic pillar of the EU approach. The article brings in a series of dilemmas concerning the design and the implementation of the ENP as well as perceptions from selected partner countries. As a potential way to manage tensions and dilemmas inherent in the EU strategy, the article proposes an altogether novel dimension: decentred integration geared towards polity-building that could partially delink convergence and access. The last section maps out four scenarios for the future directions of the ENP that cover the whole continuum from piecemeal enhancement of the policy to the creation of a European Partnership Area underpinned by a new tier of institutions. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
In this book, Eva-Maria Maggi argues that the European Union (EU) had an impact on institutional reform processes in North Africa in cases where major domestic actors agreed. She analyzes how political actors in Morocco used EU neighborhood policies to shape economic and environmental policy between 1995 and 2008. Maggi argues that it was not the design of the EU's neighborhood policies but rather the will of change of domestic actors in Morocco that determined the pace, direction of reform and the extent to which the EU continues to play a role in them. While Moroccan politics were indeed "europeanized" Maggi highlights the role of domestic actors who so effectively managed to put forth their own policy priorities and essentially "morocconized" the ENP.
Celem artykułu jest ukazanie uwarunkowań reorientacji polityki Unii wobec regionu Afryki Północnej po roku 2011, w związku z jej zaangażowaniem podczas ‘arabskiej wiosny’, a także analiza zakresu nowego podejścia w odniesieniu do praktycznych możliwości wdrażania unijnych instrumentów polityk. Powyższe rozważania pozwolą na przedstawienie wniosków dotyczących dalszego zaangażowania Unii Europejskiej w regionie Afryki Północnej i budowy nowych ram podejścia strategicznego UE w tym regionie, zarówno na płaszczyźnie ustalania interesów na arenie brukselskiej, jak i przedstawienia wypracowanego stanowiska i uruchomienia działań na arenie międzynarodowej.
The EU is a postmodern actor in international relations. The example of the EU's Mediterranean policy allows the analysis of the EU's common foreign policy to-wards a third region, with a special attention to the competing institutional frame-works and the interaction between the above and the below, between governmental and non-governmental actors. A European Mediterranean policy officially exists since the Global Concept of 1972, replaced by the Renovated Mediterranean Policy in 1990. Only in 1995, with the launching of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), was a comprehensive regional concept for the EU's external relations to the southern and eastern Mediterranean developed for the first time. One of the new elements of the EMP was to involve civil societies in this process of intensified Euro-Mediterranean intergovernmental cooperation. Complemented by the introduction of the European Policy (E in 2003, the EMP underwent various crises in its implementation and was finally renamed and upgraded into the "Union for the Mediterranean" (UfM) in 2008, by means of new institutional structures. This contribution gives an overview of the existing multilateral and bilateral policy frameworks, their objectives and interrelations. We argue that, in a globalised world, non-governmental actors are gaining more influence on the formulation processes of foreign policy. But is this observation also valid for the case of the EU's Mediterranean policy? The Mediterranean region remains a priority region for the EU for political, economic, cultural and social reasons. That is why the EU needs to invest in viable and innovative scenarios for the Euro-Mediterranean space and to keep alive Mediterranean dynamics from above.
Using a case study on France's initiative to create a Union of the Mediterranean, this article tests the hypothesis that the "largest" states of the European Union, though concentrating major sources of negotiating power, significantly jeopardize their negotiating objectives if they overstretch their negotiating power.
The patterns characterizing relations between Israel and the European Union comprise, firstly, repeatedly tense political ties that contrast with constantly deepening economic relations. Secondly the practice of bilateral relations markedly differs from their rhetoric. Thirdly, disagreements usually revolve around Middle East peacemaking. Finally, unlike the EU, Israel prefers disconnecting bilateral ties from regional politics. These patterns explain Israel's position and strategy toward the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and permit an assessment of the relevance of the latter for EU–Israeli relations. The conclusion is that the UfM is unlikely to alter the basic patterns of bilateral ties.
This contribution explores differing theories on how the failure of the ‘peace process’ featured in the design and goals of the UfM, drawing on lessons from the period when the EMP was pursued in parallel with the peace process. In each case, institutional overlaps are identified, as well as commonalities in the approaches of the actors to both pursuits. Crucially, however, the persistence and intensification of the Arab–Israeli conflict, in combination with the shift from multilateralism to bilateralism embodied in the UfM, has politicized the latter at the expense of the functionalist aspirations of its architects.
The argument advanced in this article is that EU policies helped to trigger the so-called Arab Spring, not by intention but by default. This contention is advanced through an examination of four strands of EU policy towards those countries designated as Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) under the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Programme (EMP) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), namely: trade and economic development, political reform, the ‘peace process’, and regional security (including migration control). What emerges is that the EU has not just departed from its own normative principles and aspirations for Arab reform in some instances, but that the EU has consistently prioritized European security interests over ‘shared prosperity’ and democracy promotion in the Mediterranean. The net result is a set of structured, institutionalized and securitized relationships which will be difficult to reconfigure and will not help Arab reformers attain their goals.
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