Bridges and Barriers

The European Union's Mediterranean Policy, 1961-1998

Filippos Pierros, Jacob Meunier, Stan Abrams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429648816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally published in 1999, Bridges and Barriers is a detailed study of the European Union's Mediterranean Policy from the initial agreements in the 1960s to the recent Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. The scope of this analysis includes the Maghreb and Mashreq countries in addition to Turkey, Malta, Israel, the Occupied Territories and Cyprus. The authors argue that the limited success of trade and development policy in this region resulted from endogenous and exogenous factors: examples of the former include the lack of the political will necessary to implement trade, aid and reform policies, while the latter include the energy crisis of the 1970s, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Cold War.

1	Problems Facing the Mediterranean Region

[The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership] is an ambitious, long-term enterprise. Today it is the only regional forum for dialogue between the peoples of the Mediterranean and the peoples of Europe. … The stated goal of reconciliation between peoples, of tolerance, and of better understanding demands considerable patience and tenacity. It is in this spirit that the Commission is at work, the ‘protector’ of the Barcelona process.¹

One fundamental principle lies behind the Community’s policies towards the outside: enlightened self-interest. The Community’s own economic well-being depends on a liberal, multilateral world economic order as well as on the welfare of its partners, particularly in the Third World. To this principle can be added a sense of responsibility towards former dependent territories of Member States.²

Why is a Mediterranean policy needed? Generally speaking, there are two European viewpoints on the subject. The ‘globalist’ would argue that Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is essential to reduce the Third Mediterranean Countries’ (TMCs) trade dependency on Europe and raise their living standards. The ‘realist’, in contrast, would maintain that multilateral cooperation permits the EU Member States to maximise their own national interests and foreign policy objectives.³

In this chapter, we will build a case for why a Mediterranean policy is needed, incorporating the views of both the globalists and the realists. Part I focuses on the problems facing the TMCs today. Tragically, the list is long: burgeoning populations, political instability, border disputes, human rights violations, and a host of economic ills including slow or stagnant growth rates, dependent development, inefficient state control of enterprises, a weak industrial base, under-developed service and financial sectors, and crushing foreign debt. Part II considers the potential impact—social, political and economic—that southern Mediterranean instability poses for Europe. Although some observers are inclined to view this instability as a threat, we will argue that Europe more correctly faces a challenge: to promote sustainable development, political pluralism and human rights in a region comprised of over two dozen nations spanning two continents without further straining the region’s social fabric, nor destroying its rich cultural heritage. Indeed, a reactionary policy, or a policy that imagines Euro-Mediterranean relations as a zero-sum game, will only provoke greater discord; the dire warnings of ‘southern threats to northern shores’ will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.⁴ One observer warns:

If all the peoples of the region do not perceive the Euro-Mediterranean [Partnership] as a genuine bringer of shared peace and progress, if it proves itself incapable of repairing the social fracture that runs from east to west across the Mediterranean, the disillusionment that follows may well lead to open confrontations and, as Samuel Huntington and others warn, a clash of civilisations.⁵

Many of the problems facing the region—pollution, unemployment, immigration and terrorism—are concerns shared by peoples on both shores of the Mediterranean. This makes the need for a common solution, a synthesis of the globalist and realist viewpoints, all the more urgent.

Part I: Problems in the Mediterranean Today

The past two centuries of southern Mediterranean history have been tumultuous indeed. European domination, financial and political collapse, failed pan-Arab movements, two world wars, the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the Gulf War have left a legacy of social, economic and political instability. The following brief survey of this legacy shows why a concerted effort to stabilise and rebuild the region is needed.

Population Growth

The population of the TMCs has been increasing rapidly since the 1940s, straining to their limits the societies and economies of the region. The present demographic regime is unsustainable, and has been expressed in high rates of unemployment and downward pressure on per capita income. Although high fertility rates, the principal culprit behind the population explosion, have recently shown signs of decreasing, the population of the TMCs will continue to expand well into the twenty-first century. Hence, there is a genuine cause for concern.

The southern shores of the Mediterranean were sparsely populated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although precise statistics are lacking, it is estimated that in 1870 the Ottoman Empire contained no more than 12.5 million Muslim subjects.⁶ As late as 1930, the Maghreb was home to only 15 million Muslims. Then the population exploded: medical advances, better hygiene and increased food supplies reduced positive checks on the population (those that increase mortality), while preventative checks (those that lower fertility, such as birth control and family planning) were slow to take their place. The ‘negative feedback loop’ that had kept population stable, balanced for hundreds of years as if on the edge of a Malthusian precipice, had been broken.⁷ Between 1950 and 1980, the number of inhabitants of the southern Mediterranean countries doubled.

Today, while fertility rates in the southern EU countries (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece) average between 1.3 and 1.8 children per woman, fertility rates in the TMCs are considerably higher, ranging from 3.6 to 6.5.⁸ The population of the TMCs is increasing by 2 to 3 per cent or more each year, although the statistics vary considerably between countries. For example, the populations of Malta and Cyprus have remained relatively stable, while the population of the Occupied Territories has been steadily accelerating since the 1970s. The Palestinian population grew by 2 per cent annually between 1969 and 1980, 3 per cent annually between 1981 and 1987, and 4 per cent annually between 1988 and 1991.⁹ In 1950, two-thirds of the population of the Mediterranean basin lived on its northern shores; by 2025 it is estimated that the situation will have completely reversed itself. ¹⁰ In the Maghreb alone, between 2000 and 2025, the population will grow from 70 million to 97.5 million, an increase of 40 per cent.¹¹ In the not-so-distant future, the population of Morocco will be larger than that of Spain, and the combined populations of Algeria and Tunisia larger than that of France.

Overpopulation is already taking its toll. ‘Overpopulation’ is, of course, a relative term. France in 1600, with barely 20 million souls living within its borders, was overpopulated because the available food supply could not sustain the populace.¹² Although mass starvation is no longer a concern in Africa north of the Sahara, mass unemployment and poverty are; the demographic explosion—combined with lacklustre economic growth—has swelled the numbers of jobless and diluted national wealth to the point where per capita income on the northern shore is 11 times higher than in the south. Despite efforts by the international community in the 1970s and 1980s to reduce this disparity, the problem shows every sign of worsening.¹³ In 1996, unemployment was running at 6 per cent in Turkey, 9 per cent in Egypt, 16 per cent in Tunisia, 20 per cent in Lebanon and Morocco and 28 per cent in Algeria.

Of course, at first glance it would appear that unemployment levels in the TMCs are actually comparable to those in Europe. After all, unemployment rates in France, Spain and Germany are in the double-digits. The situation is far more serious in the TMCs than the statistics would suggest, however. Not only are unemployed workers in Europe protected by a generous welfare system while those in the TMCs are not, but unemployment figures do not take into account the percentage of the population that is underemployed, a condition that is particularly prevalent in rural areas of the southern Mediterranean. Also known as ‘disguised unemployment’, it has been explained as follows:

When there are people who desire to work, or are actively looking for work, and cannot find work, they are said to be unemployed. Very few people in rural areas of developing countries are unemployed in this sense. While most rural people have jobs, those jobs are not very productive. In many cases there is not enough work to employ the entire rural workforce full time.¹⁴

In other words, labour resources in the TMCs are inefficiently allocated. Were they deployed more efficiently, economic growth would be stronger.

Just to keep the official unemployment figures from rising further due to projected increases in population, enormous yearly increases in a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) are needed: nearly 9 per cent in Tunisia, 11 per cent in Egypt, and over 12 per cent in Algeria and Morocco, according to one estimate. Achieving this growth will be challenging indeed; today, the southern Mediterranean, with 40 per cent of the population, generates only 6 per cent of the region’s total GDP.¹⁵ Europe, observes one French demographer, ‘is sterile but opulent’, while the Arab world ‘is burning up with this extraordinary demographic exuberance’.¹⁶

Fortunately, the demographic explosion of the twentieth century is not likely to be repeated in the twenty-first; experts note that fertility rates are already falling in many North African countries. In 1960, an Algerian woman gave birth to an average of 8.4 children; in 1990, she gave birth to an average of 4.7. Similar statistics may be cited for the other Maghreb countries. Clearly, efforts to promote birth control have not been in vain, contrary to the received wisdom that the population of North Africa continues to grow unchecked. Even the United Nations and the World Bank, while acknowledging a decline in fertility rates in the Maghreb, underestimate the magnitude of the decline.¹⁷ ‘A reappraisal of the facts is essential for the indigenous and expatriate populations alike. This shows that following a historical phase of pronounced growth, demographic transition is now firmly under way.’¹⁸

Besides deliberate family planning policies, various sociological factors act to slow population growth. Urbanisation is one such factor. ‘The percentage of the TMCs’ urban population rose from about 15 per cent around the turn of the century to about 55 per cent in the mid-1990s,’ another observer declares. ‘While the total population increased five-fold (from about 38 to 185 million), the urban population grew fifteen-fold (from around 6 to over 90 million).’¹⁹ As the TMCs’ population becomes more concentrated in the cities, women tend to have fewer children. The lack of available living space is one reason, the increased participation of women in the work force another. In the cities, where jobs in factories, offices and classrooms beckon, a large family is seen as an opportunity cost for paid work. Thus, in 1987, rural women in the Maghreb had an average fertility rate of approximately 6 children per woman, while their urban sisters were half as fertile (2.9 children per woman).²⁰

Another factor tending to lower fertility rates is education. The average Moroccan woman with a few years of primary education had 3.2 children, whereas the average illiterate woman had 5.2 children. Educated women are more likely to use contraception and tend to marry at a later age, thereby decreasing the number of years during which they can become pregnant.²¹ In short, ‘… fertility tends to decrease as women’s lot improves, in towns and in cities, where the gender gap in education and jobs is being closed’.²²

Finally, there is evidence to suggest that migration (discussed in more detail in Part II, below) has a positive impact on declining fertility rates. For example, Maghrebin emigrants in Europe, through remittances and annual holiday treks to their native villages in cars laden with household goods, contribute to the development of a consumer culture in their home countries.²³ ‘Increased income raises aspirations for social mobility, resulting in a heightened desire to acquire consumer goods which compete with the additional child for family resources.’²⁴ But the emigrant workers carry home with them something more important than material goods: a set of values learned in their host countries—values concerning health, marriage, family size, contraception and education for girls—that has hastened the process of demographic transition in the southern Mediterranean countries. ‘Without emigration leading to the remittance of savings, sending of consumer goods, and above all the transfer of values and outlooks, the transition to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms
• Introduction: Europe and the Mediterranean
• 1 Problems Facing the Mediterranean Region
• 2 The Early Agreements, 1961-1972
• 3 The Global Mediterranean Policy, 1972-1989
• 4 The Redirected Mediterranean Policy, 1989-1994
• 5 The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, 1994-1998
• Conclusion: The Future of Euro-Mediterranean Relations
• Appendix I Barcelona Declaration and Work Programme
• Appendix II Tables and Graphs Country-by-Country
• Appendix III Final Declaration of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors