The Neighbours of the European Union's Neighbours

Diplomatic and Geopolitical Dimensions beyond the European Neighbourhood Policy

Sieglinde Gstöhl, Erwan Lannon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472417770
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317023166
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Should the European Neighbourhood Policy stop at the borders of the European Union's immediate neighbouring countries? This book is the first full length study of the 'neighbours of the EU's neighbours', a concept originally introduced by the European Commission with reference to Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. These regions in the EU's broader neighbourhood are often perceived as an 'arc of crisis' from which manifold challenges emanate for Europe. This timely book takes stock of the state of the EU's cooperation with the neighbours of its neighbours and explores how the concept might help promote security, stability and prosperity beyond the countries which are formally part of the European Neighbourhood Policy. How can the EU create bridges between these regions? What instruments does the EU have at its disposal and how can it link them in order to respond to the challenges and overcome the current fragmentation? One of the conclusions is the suggestion to consider a pragmatic 'EU Strategy for the Neighbours of its Neighbours' which addresses the needs of the broader EU neighbourhood in a more systematic and consistent manner and helps transform in the long run the 'arc of crisis' into another 'ring of friends'.

Chapter 1 Introduction: The 'Neighbours of the EU's Neighbours', the ‘EU's Broader Neighbourhoo' and the 'Arc of Crisis and Strategic Challenges' from the Sahel to Central Asia

Erwan Lannon

DOI: 10.4324/9781315555287-1

Introduction

We are currently witnessing the rapid development of a new ‘arc of crisis and strategic challenges’ from the Sahel to Central Asia. A sort of ‘second ring’ has been emerging around the ‘EU’s immediate neighbourhood circle’, that Romano Prodi, the then President of the European Commission, described as a ‘ring of friends’ when the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was launched.¹ Obviously the current destabilization of some of the ‘neighbours of the EU’s neighbours’ has and will have a strong impact on the stability and security of the EU and its neighbours.

1 Prodi, R. 2002. A Wider Europe – A Proximity Policy as the Key to Stability, Sixth ECSA-World Conference, Brussels, 5–6 December, SPEECH/02/619, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release-SPEECH-02–619-en.htm [accessed: 22 March 2014].

Indeed, it is impossible today to properly address the situation in Libya without referring to the situation in Mali and in the Sahel at large or the one in Egypt without mentioning the role played by Saudi Arabia or Qatar.² The evolution of the civil war in Syria is unfortunately a very good example where all neighbours of this country, as well as external actors/powers, play a role in or are affected by the conflict. These are just a few examples among many others in the EU’s broader southern neighbourhoods. In the East, the Russian Federation is an EU neighbour but also a neighbour of EU neighbours included in the ENP like Ukraine or the Southern Caucasus countries. Russia is also a direct neighbour of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan via the Caspian Sea.³

2 See Chapter 6 by Silvia Colombo and Chapter 5 by Andrew Bower and Raphaël Metais. 3 See Maps I and IV in the Annex.

The neighbours of the enlarged EU are thus European, African and Asian and are located in a particular regional environment that must be taken into consideration in order to reach the three general objectives of the ENP: stability, security and prosperity. Good neighbourly relations are a key principle enshrined in Article 8 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the current legal basis for developing a ‘special relationship with neighbouring countries’.⁴

4 Article 8 of the TEU states: ‘1. The Union shall develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union and characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation. 2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the Union may conclude specific agreements with the countries concerned. These agreements may contain reciprocal rights and obligations as well as the possibility of undertaking activities jointly. Their implementation shall be the subject of periodic consultation’. See also Hanf, D. 2012. The European Neighbourhood Policy in the Light of the New ‘Neighbourhood Clause’ (Article 8 TEU), in Lannon, E. (ed.), The European Neighbourhood Policy’s Challenges/Les défis de la politique européenne de voisinage. Brussels: Peter Lang, 109–23.

The main objective of this contribution is to introduce the concepts of the ‘neighbours of the EU’s neighbours’ and of the ‘EU’s broader neighbourhood’ and to identify and categorize, as clearly as possible, the countries and (sub-)regions which are at the heart of the analyses conducted in this volume. These two notions are in fact quite difficult to circumscribe. For instance, China is a neighbour of an EU neighbour (Russia) but is not taken into consideration as such in this analysis but as one of the ‘global players in the EU’s broader neighbourhood’.⁵ Also, if one considers all EU maritime borders, this could lead us to the Arctic and the Pacific Ocean via the US, Norway, Canada and Russia. It is thus important to limit, as clearly as possible, the scope of the analysis to countries and regions that can be relatively well identified and that do belong to the same geopolitical areas. This is not an easy task as, for example, a neighbour of the EU might not necessarily be included (yet) in the European Neighbourhood Policy framework (Libya, Switzerland or Turkey). Moreover, some partners of the EU which are included in the ENP are not necessarily direct neighbours of EU Member States, geographically speaking (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Jordan).⁶

5 See Chapter 12 by Jonatan Thompson in this volume. 6 See Map I in the Annex.

In 2006 the European Commission introduced the concept of the neighbours of the EU’s neighbours at a time when the ENP was just about to become fully operational.⁷ However, since then not much has been achieved despite the war in Mali and its repercussions in Algeria and Libya, the further regionalization of the Syrian conflict or the deterioration of the human rights situation in some Central Asian countries.⁸ It is true that the EU, notably in Africa, has designed sub-regional initiatives⁹ and that several missions and operations under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) have been launched but it is still difficult to identify a long-term and comprehensive EU strategy regarding the ‘neighbours of its neighbours’ or some kind of ‘broader neighbourhood strategy’. It is therefore urgent to draw the attention of decision-makers to this strategic deficit. The necessity of updating the EU’s approach is obvious in the light of the consolidation of this ‘arc of crisis and strategic challenges’ and implies identifying the means and instruments at the disposal of the EU to tackle all kinds of transnational factors of destabilization.¹⁰ It is also fundamental to look for potential areas of transnational cooperation and to consider this geopolitical area not only as a threat, but also as an opportunity for further linkages and cooperation across the traditional EU frameworks for cooperation.

7 The European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) entered into force on 1 January 2007. 8 See Chapter 8 by Francesca Fenton in this volume. 9 See notably the contributions of David O’Sullivan (Foreword), Alexander Mattelaer (Chapter 3), Alex Vines and Ahmed Soliman (Chapter 4) and Claudia Zulaika (Chapter 2) in this volume. 10 Terrorism, organized crime, illegal immigration, etc.

In order to introduce these challenges and concepts, we will address three main points:

1. the consolidation of an ‘arc of crisis and strategic challenges’ from the Sahel to Central Asia via the Horn of Africa¹¹ and the Arabian Gulf;
2. the EU’s neighbours and their neighbours; and
3. the emergence of the concept of the ‘neighbours of our neighbours’.

11 See Chapter 4 by Alex Vines and Ahmed Soliman in this volume.

The Consolidation of an ‘Arc of Crisis and Strategic Challenges’ from the Sahel to Central Asia via the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Gulf

Since the launching of the present project on the neighbours of the EU’s neighbours in 2012,¹² the situation has dramatically evolved. The perception of the development of an arc of crisis and instability surrounding the EU’s neighbours is now shared by the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who declared at the Munich Security Conference in February 2013: ‘when I look at our world, I see an arc of crises stretching from the Sahel to Central Asia’.¹³ In October 2013, the annual report of the European Parliament on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) also referred to an ‘arc of strategic challenges stretching from Central Asia to the Middle East and from the Horn of Africa across the Sahel’.¹⁴ It is proposed, in this introduction, to combine the ‘strategic’ and ‘political’ approaches to work on the concept of an ‘arc of crisis and strategic challenges’ that take stock o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures, Maps and Tables
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword by David O’Sullivan
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: The ‘Neighbours of the EU’s Neighbours’, the ‘EU’s Broader Neighbourhood’ and the ‘Arc of Crisis and Strategic Challenges’ from the Sahel to Central Asia
• Part I Geopolitical Dimensions Beyond the ENP’S South: Sahel and Horn of Africa
• Part II Geopolitical Dimensions beyond the ENP’S East: Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran
• Part III Geopolitical Dimensions Beyond the ENP’S East: Central Asia
• Part IV Diplomatic Dimensions Beyond the ENP: Lessons for EU Diplomacy
• Annex: List of Agreements and Maps
• Index