EU Neighbourhood Policy in the Maghreb

Implementing the ENP in Tunisia and Morocco Before and After the Arab Uprisings

Iole Fontana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315300535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In light of their geographical proximity and crucial strategic importance, the European Union (EU) has long identified cooperation with the countries of the Mediterranean region a central priority of its external relations and has developed a complex set of policies and instruments. Yet, there is a certain academic consensus that EU external policies in the area did not live up to their original expectations, insofar as little progress was made to accomplish the proclaimed goals while the implementation of structural reforms proved to be extremely problematic. These deficiencies in EU Mediterranean policies are symptomatic of what is a greater challenge in EU external policy-making: the struggle for implementation.

This book analyses the implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy in the Mediterranean, focusing on specific programs financed under the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument in the years before and after the Arab uprisings. Building on a comparative analysis of two Maghreb countries, Tunisia and Morocco, it provides an in-depth investigation on the role of domestic actors in constraining or providing points of opportunity for the implementation of the ENP. The book presents new empirical data and, by focusing on the role of local actors in the neighbouring countries, it offers interesting insights not only into the ENPI complex processes of implementation, but also on the challenges of the E U in the region and the state of relations with the Southern neighbourhood.

Through the prism of the European Neighbourhood Policy, the book provides a window into the internal politics and relevant issues of Maghreb countries. It will therefore be a valuable resource for students and scholars of European and Mediterranean Studies, as well as those interested in EU international relations.

1 Introduction

The Mediterranean region has for a long time been one of the main targets of European Union’s (EU) external policy-making. In light of their geographical proximity and crucial strategic importance, the EU identified cooperation with the countries of the area as a central priority of its external relations and developed a complex set of policies and instruments. Since the 1970s, individual Association Agreements were signed with Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) and Mashreq (Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) countries¹ and more comprehensive policies were introduced² (Bicchi, 2007). Building on this, the 1995 Euro–Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) updated the first generation of Association Agreements and provided a multilateral framework for the promotion of political, economic and cultural cooperation, whereas the Union for the Mediterranean relaunched the Barcelona Process in 2008 and emerged as a forum for regional exchanges. Similarly, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) – introduced in 2003 and renewed twice in 2011 and 2015 – became the overarching framework for the relations with the Southern neighbours and the primary channel to promote key reforms at bilateral level.

This brief overview is emblematic of the EU considerable engagement in the Mediterranean. Yet, there is a certain academic consensus that EU external policies in the area did not live up to their original expectations, insofar as little progress was made to accomplish the proclaimed goals while the implementation of structural reforms proved to be extremely problematic (Del Sarto & Schumacher, 2005; Keukeleire & Delreux, 2014, pp. 250–255; Knio, 2013). These deficiencies in EU Mediterranean policies are symptomatic of what is a greater challenge in EU external policy-making: the struggle for implementation.

Implementation is the crucial stage where EU policies are put to test and where deviations from the original objects are recurrent (Dimitrakopoulos & Richardson, 2001; Milio, 2010). Major difficulties stem from the fact that implementation is an interactive endeavour that ultimately depends upon the skilful hands of multiple actors and upon ‘external’ circumstances that might potentially alter it (O’Toole, 2004, p. 326; Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984, p. 183). This means that, in the domain of external policies, EU institutions and the member states are not the only relevant actors, but that the implementation endeavour inevitably depends also on the interaction with the third countries that are the final recipients of the policy and upon their domestic actors and conditions. It is up to local actors’ will and capability to implement EU programs and spend EU money for specific purposes so to guarantee implementation on the ground. Similarly, systemic events altering local conditions in the recipient countries might affect the pace and the quality of implementation. The consequences of the Eurozone economic crisis, the Arab uprisings or the Ukraine crisis are illustrative of circumstances potentially altering the implementation of EU external policies.

The ENP in the Mediterranean is a glaring example of the ‘complexity of joint action’ in implementation (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984) and a test case of the difficulties that the interaction with the neighbouring partners gives away to. The increasing gap between the money committed to sustain reforms in Mediterranean countries and the actual payment rates reveals that the peculiarities of the local implementing environment influence the recipient countries’ capacity to absorb – and therefore spend – EU funds. The variation of performance across the same region shows that Brussels has to deal with different outcomes as generated by the different manner in which its policy has been implemented in Tunis or in Rabat. Furthermore, in the post-uprisings environment, where some of the old constraints disappear while others continue to stand, and where the stage is set for new political actors, ENP’s sensitiveness to neighbours’ domestic actors and conditions becomes even more important in light of the different degrees of change and (in)stability after 2011.

EU promotion of reforms in the neighbourhood has been most often explained through the EU prism – by drawing from the theoretical debates on its actorness (Börzel & Risse, 2004; Delcour & Tulmets, 2008; Panebianco, 2008; Smith, 2003, 2005) and normative power (Barbé & Johansson-Nogués, 2008; Bosse, 2007; Diez, 2005; Pace, 2007). By contrast, much less attention was devoted to analyses from the angle of domestic actors. The literature on EU external policy-making has mainly adopted a top-down approach that frames the policies and their implementation from the EU point of view. Therefore, in the recurrent debate on the EU rhetoric-practice gap, any inconsistency between EU stated goals and actual outcomes, as well as the poor ENP effectiveness, are explained mainly in terms of the limits of EU capacities and instruments. While this ‘inside-out’ perspective is fundamental, it is not able to fully capture the ‘dilemmas of the implementation’ (Bicchi, 2010a) that lay behind EU external policies, as it does not shed light on how implementation actually works on the local ground and how the EU interacts with local actors. The adoption of the sole top-down perspective, by starting from the authoritative decision and analysing the role of the EU centrally located actors and their instruments, fails to fully account for implementation in the domain of external policies, as ‘a wide gap can arise between expectations in Brussels and actions in non-member countries’ (Bicchi, 2010a, p. 982). Moreover, these explanations are not able to explain why EU external action yields to different performances and implementation results across countries.

This book analyses how EU’s external policies are implemented in the domestic context of the recipient countries and – by adopting a local perspective – it explains the obstacles and facilitating conditions that affect implementation on the ground. The book’s initial claim is that the study of EU policy-making towards third countries is characterised by a ‘missing link’ (Robichau & Lynn, 2009), in the sense that interaction with local domestic actors as a significant research area has been overlooked. To put it differently, while Europeanisation and enlargement literatures deal with the question of the extent to which member and candidate states ‘make European policies work’ (Siedentopf & Ziller, 1988), here the puzzle is to what extent neighbours and third countries make EU external policies work.

The book investigates the implementation of the ENP in two Maghreb countries – Tunisia and Morocco – by departing from the analysis of their local actors and domestic conditions before and after 2011. The focus of the analysis is on the bilateral reform programs financed through the European Neighbourhood Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which is the ENP’s main financial tool. Whereas the ENP is a ‘dense web of cooperation arrangements’ (Lavenex, 2008, p. 944) with an agenda that is much broader than – and not limited to – the reform programs financed by ENPI, yet their analysis is extremely useful and illustrative of ENP implementation dynamics on the ground. The bilateral cooperation programs are in fact designed to reflect the goals set out in the ENP programmatic documents, and, as such, they contribute considerably to the overall achievement of the policy’s objectives. By adopting a local perspective, I contend that the implementation of the ENP reform programs in Morocco and Tunisia is contingent upon three independent variables: domestic political actors, administration and civil society. These three variables are useful to explain successes and gaps in the implementation of EU programs, as well as different performance and results across countries. In particular, the book shows that domestic actors can make a difference for the implementation of the ENP insofar as they can favour or hinder the execution of key reforms programs on the ground. In this sense, this volume is an up-to-date contribution that addresses a timely and yet understudied topic, such as the promotion and implementation of reforms in the neighbourhood from a local perspective.

The book’s final argument is that the degree of (mis)fit between the goals of domestic political actors and the ENP reform agenda, the degree of administrative capacity and the degree of strength and autonomy of civil society influence the implementation of the ENP on the ground and the absorption of EU funds. Moreover, if after 2011 there was a big variance in the way Mediterranean countries absorbed and implemented ENP funds, this is because the Arab uprisings altered in a different way domestic actors on the ground, determining different ENP implementation performances.

1.1 The ENP: a brief overview of implementing instruments and documents

Launched as a logical response to the historic enlargement that changed the external borders of the Union (European Commission, 2004a), the ENP has become a framework to promote political, social and economic reforms, development and modernisation in the neighbourhood³ (Ferrero-Waldner, 2005). It developed as a broad and multifaceted platform that includes political dialogue, foreign and security cooperation, mobility, trade and economic integration, financial assistance and people-to-people contacts. As such, it emerged as the main EU reform policy for the Mediterranean and the fundamental venue for Euro-Mediterranean relations (Panebianco, 2008). Since 2005, almost all Mediterranean partners⁴ have gradually adopted an ENP Action Plan (AP), i.e. a bilateral political document, which sets an agenda of political and economic reforms by reflecting EU’s interests and democratic values, the country’s needs and capacities, as well as by defining short and medium-term priorities for action.

Financial assistance is in this context a fundamental instrument (Holden, 2005). In order to implement the bilateral AP, the ENP is equipped with the ENPI – today called European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI)⁵ – which is the ENP’s financial tool and is one of the six instruments of EU external action.⁶ It provides a framework for planning and delivering EU assistance in the neighbourhood (ENPI Regulation, 2006), by defining how, where, when and for what EU money can be spent (European Commission, 2009, p. 52). The ENPI, therefore, provides funding to the neighbouring countries to sustain their internal reforms and to transform political decisions into concrete actions on the ground. Aid allocations depend on the level of ambition of the EU’s partnership with a given country, as well as on the country’s characteristics in terms of needs, progress towards agreed objectives and capacity to absorb EU’s funds (ENPI Regulation, 2006).

Funds are programmed through three sets of programmatic documents that are jointly negotiated between the EU and the local authorities of the partner country:

• the Country Strategy Papers (CSP) cover a wide time-frame of seven years (2007–2013) and define the general goals and programmatic framework according to the country’s needs;

• the National Indicative Programs (NIP) split the wider time-frame into two periods (2007–2010 and 2011–2013) and, according to the priorities of the CSP, set the goals and programs of action for each time-period;

• the Annual Action Programs (AAP), through specific Action Fiches, identify on an annual basis specific programs of bilateral cooperation, according to the priority areas set by the NIPs. The bilateral AAPs – which channel the biggest part of ENPI funds – determine the type of program, the funds committed, the objectives pursued, the expected results and the implementation methods. The main purpose of these documents is to programme EU aids in order to achieve the goals of the AP (see Table 1.1). The first step for the implementation of the AAPs is the joint negotiation of a financing convention prepared by the EU Delegation on the ground, sent back to Brussels headquarters for approval and eventually signed by the country’s authorities. Under the new ENI, by contrast, EU assistance is defined through a Single Support Framework, which specifies – all in a single document – the progress of the country, the strategic objectives of cooperation, its expected results and level of funding.

Table 1.1 ENP’s main implementing documents

ENP		What
Policy Content	Action Plan Implemented through ↓	Agenda of political/economic reforms; Medium/short-terms priorities
Policy Instrument	ENPI	Financial tool to allocate resources and deliver EU assistance (2007–2013)
Progr...