European Union (EU) relations with its self-defined Southern Neighborhood: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia, have become an area of increasing study since the Arab uprisings began in Tunisia in 2010. The uprisings then quickly affected Egypt, Libya, and Syria in particular and have even spread to other parts of the Southern Neighborhood once thought to be immune from protests due to their recent history, such as Algeria. When charting subsequent events, including North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Libya from March to October 2014, Russia’s intervention in Syria starting in September 2015, and rising commitments to counterterrorism operations in the Sahel, scholars and policymakers are reminded that insecurity persists around the Mediterranean. Yet insecurity, like so many other themes explored in this book such as religiopolitical challenges, mercenaries and militia, and economic engagement through infrastructure, have been apparent for millennia. The Romans cultivated client states around the fringes of the Mediterranean (Gambash 2017). Machiavelli argued that mercenaries were necessary to strengthen political power, and Lower (2017) concludes this was the case especially where religious differences meant they never threatened their employer. Where the Reformation posed challenges to official state engagement, Pirillo (2017) finds that diplomatic back channels were used instead.
Chronic insecurity has become a feature of North African politics, yet insecurity has become a feature in Europe as well. In Cyprus, the ethnic Greek and Turkish communities have been separated since 1974, and in the Balkans, the breakup of Yugoslavia followed a series of upheavals and conflicts in the early 1990s. The Mediterranean refugee crisis from 2015 was a period characterized by the high number of people arriving in the EU from the Mediterranean Sea and overland from Southeast Europe. With drivers extending as far as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in the East, down to Eritrea and Somalia in Africa, the crisis has exacerbated social tensions. European state responses have varied from initial accommodation and negotiation with important transit countries such as Turkey, to a populist and xenophobic backlash. Political gains have been made by some European far right groups, especially in Switzerland, Austria, and Hungary, who have been able to leverage fears of violent Islamist (inspired) attacks in Europe. The UK referendum to leave the EU (Brexit) in 2016 hails a new era for Anglo-European relations. This at a time when European (including British) hard and soft power influence is under pressure from illiberal states such as Russia as well as the populist, transactional and unilateral politics of the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s decision to temporarily bar flights from Europe during the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020 without prior consultation with EU counterparts appears to confirm that the transatlantic relationship is indeed under threat. This is especially damaging as close transatlantic relations have been a cornerstone of the post-1945 international order. Polarization in mainstream politics and growing inequality in economies have fed populism and fuelled discontent even before allegations of Russian electoral interference are considered.
Changes in the global economy have also put the Mediterranean at the forefront of EU responses, including a €289 billion bailout to Greece (the biggest bailout in global financial history) to tackle its sovereign debt crisis in 2010, brought on by the global financial crisis in 2007/2008. The rise of China and the implementation of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is attractive not only to Asian and African states in need of new infrastructure projects and financing, but a whole host of developed countries, including Israel, Greece, and Italy. The fear here is that eastern and southern neighbors, as well as EU member states themselves, will fall prey to an increasingly assertive China that could fundamentally undermine Europe’s identity that is based on liberal democratic values, closer cooperation and integration. The EU response to China came in September 2018 when it launched a “Connectivity Strategy” linking the EU with Asia that put more emphasis on nations rather than states, would be rules based, and provide alternative sources of financing. Mobilizing private and multilateral investors could scale up the budget.
Apart from increasing competition in the Eurasian region between major powers such as the EU, USA, China, and Russia, there are also growing energy considerations to take into consideration in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel discovered a giant gas field, Leviathan block, in 2010. Lebanon has also found deposits. Further discoveries have been made in the Israeli and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), while Italy’s ENI found a large natural gas field, named Zohr, in Egyptian waters.
In an age of growing insecurity from non-state and transnational threats, counterterrorism cooperation is an important dimension in Euro–Mediterranean relations. But full political cooperation remains an over-the-horizon objective following the first EU–Arab League summit in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2019. This should not be a surprise given the persistent mismatch of the political philosophies, systems of government, and body politik of the states involved. During the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, Thomas Hobbes referred to the “voice of the people” (1660) while John Locke (1689) wrote about people-driven government and a separation of powers which has largely informed modern secular politics in Europe. In premodern entities in the Middle East, while the notion of sovereignty existed, so did alternative traditions of diplomacy, more personalized systems of governance, and a changing external environment, such as colonial encroachment, that helped give agency to officials in the public domain more than is perhaps the case today. These points are overlaid with more contemporary issues arising from complications, threats, and challenges that can obfuscate advances in bilateral relations and have undermined a comprehensive Mediterranean security system.
The wider Middle East is currently experiencing an escalating rivalry and series of proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Rather than mediate, the Trump administration’s rhetoric and policies continue to make the USA an actor and force for escalation in this dynamic. Israel remains alert to the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran but also to patterns of asymmetric warfare from its southern flank in Gaza and increasingly, from its northern flank in Lebanon, manifest in Hezbollah which is supported by weapons transfers from Iran. We see many examples where broadly conceived national security policies include repressive tendencies against civil society and the retrenchment of the elite into “bunker states.” While this trend has been evident throughout the region, it has been most recently apparent in Turkey after the failed military coup in 2016. The consequences again, are not favorable to transnational security cooperation.
Finally, the EU leadership itself was in flux in 2019. The new EU Commission president has been announced as Germany’s Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen. Charles Michel, formerly Prime Minister of Belgium, will take over as the new Head of the European Council, and Josep Borrell, a Spanish politician, will be the new Head of External Relations. Christine Lagarde, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, was announced as the new president of the European Central Bank (ECB) in September 2019.
Evolutions in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP)
The Middle East is a contested geographical area, bound up with religious significance in the holy sites of Mecca and Jerusalem, along with significant energy resources in the Gulf region. After the Gulf War in 1991, the US-sponsored Middle East Peace Process and accompanying diplomatic activity in the 1990s gave cause for optimism about the prospects for enhanced regional security. Into this came European efforts, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), which was a multilateral approach launched in Barcelona in 1995. As Del Sarto (2006) asserts, the EMP relied on a regional-building approach to regional security based on common interests between the EU and southern neighbors. While the European interest is to remain free from direct military threats, resolve conflicts, improve cooperation, and prevent south–south conflicts which could lead to spillover in the Mediterranean, the EMP was not the instrument to achieve this according to Biscop (2003). The Barcelona Process had a broad, but not military, agenda in promoting cooperation and a very different DNA to the specific events and processes that generated the institutions of the EU and NATO. A lack of Mediterranean security cooperation could thus initially be chalked up to a poor institutional toolkit and the failure of Arab–Israeli peacemaking, notably in the breakdown of the Camp David Summit and the onset of the second intifada in 2000. The EU’s inability to resolve existing or potential conflicts has been a persistent theme. Included in this is the lack of confidence and security-building measures with southern neighbors.
Following the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, the ENP was conceived in order to promote prosperity, stability and security, and avoid creating new dividing lines between the enlarged EU, candidate countries, and immediate neighbors in the east and south. Prior to the Arab uprisings in 2010, the ENP pro-democratization policies were still judged to be incoherent and weak, although small-scale programs existed (Youngs 2006). The EU was mindful of failed democratic elections in Algeria in 1991 and the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, followed by the battle of Gaza which brought Hamas to power in the Gaza strip in 2007. Democracy had its downside. The EU was also probably aware of the broad range of literature on the nature of democratization from notable authors such as Huntingdon (1991). Recent analysis shows that democratization stems not from political leverage but from longer-term changes taking place involving socioeconomic conditions and patterns of governance (Levenex and Schimmelpfenig 2011). While the EU attempted to balance norms and values with other, notably security interests, a laissez faire approach effectively gave (and continues to give) repressive authoritarian regimes the upper hand and insulation they require to survive and consolidate.
The Barcelona Process was relaunched as the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in 2008, including a range of projects from economy and environment to migration and social affairs, but still put political and economic ties (prizing security and stability) ahead of democracy and human rights. Thus, in the lead up to the Arab uprisings, closer ties were being sought with Gaddafi’s Libya and Ben Ali’s Tunisia. The elite-centric focus has fundamentally undermined the UfM and has caused significant difficulties in generating closer political ties between the EU and some member states such as France and Southern Neighborhood states in transition, such as Tunisia (Khalaf and Daneshkhu 2011). In the words of Behr (2014), the ENP has effectively gone “full circle.” The European Commission (2011) adjusted the ENP following the Arab uprisings with A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean. It encouraged more reform efforts with additional support, including financial. The ENP was revised again in line with the EU’s new Global Strategy (EUGS) which was adopted in June 2016 and focuses on new aspects such as resilience. The revised ENP launched on November 18, 2015 (notably after the Arab uprisings refocused attention on the Southern Neighborhood) removed many of the enlargement related tools and reduced EU focus on democracy promotion, good governance, the rule of law and human rights (Delcour 2017, 1). In other words, it has become de-politicized. Bilateral issues appear to be...