European Perspective

3. THE EUROPEAN ("MEDITERRANEAN")

PERSPECTIVE

From a thematic point of view, this paper investigates one of the four great "exogenous", "top-down", "outside-in" perspectives on the security in the Middle East isolated and analyzed in this thesis – the not rarely so-called "Mediterranean", whose operative subject is, currently, the European Union. As may be recalled, the other three are: the so-called "Greater Middle East" perspective, formulated and implemented by the United States; the Russian perspective; the Chinese perspective. In this thematic context, admittedly, the perspective analyzed in this paper is one of high particularity, one might say the most atypical of the four, possibly, under three aspects.

First, and probably foremost, the EU joining the line USA – China – Russia is likely to attract significant controversy related to the classification of the first as – in accordance with the very title of the thesis – "great power". And these potential controversies are potentiated by the very self-assumed, vague, diffuse character, of the term "great power" itself, in the same title, which might lead the reader thinking either at the bipolar period of the Cold War, or at the interwar period, unless even further in the past, in structures of international systems where the term in question identified a superior clarity and applicability. By comparison, the EU is by no means a state, or en empire, or a superpower in the classical term of the word, which in the first instance severely questions the applicability of the label "great power"; its very structural philosophy is the object of some veritable debate between the partisans of supernationalism and intergovernmentalism, or between the federalist and sovereignist lines of thought and positions; currently, the EU is neither a state, nor a mere intergovernmental organization of states, but something in between; it has something like an executive body – the European Commission, and even a Parliament, but whose members are elected by means of an electoral procedure based on states, and the major decisions continue to be adopted by the European Council, which gathers the member states' head of states and/or government; and, true enough, its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) are at the moment of this paper still in a rather early stage, the prerogatives of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy admit no reasonable comparison with that of a foreign or defence minister at the national level, and the external military operations assumed at a collective level within EU are rather related to peace-keeping and present as achievements a quite modest picture: according to the latest CIA World Factbook edition, the five nation "Eurocorps" (created in 1992 by France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg) has so far deployed peace-keeping troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and the D.R. of the Congo, and assumed command of the Afghanistan-based ISAF in 2004. However, applying the realist classical general logic, for instance in Morgenthau’s format, which inventories nine so-called attributes of national power, and investigating summarily among a few simultaneously quantifiable and publicly communicated, the ration of the four analyzed entities, EU included, seems reasonably balanced:

A few capabilities of the four great powers, 2014

Source: CIA World Factbook 2015

True, such partial and superficial data may be misleading or at least of certainly limited knowledge offered, because extremely relevant elements are not covered, such as the degree of modernization and/or of wear and tear of military equipment, dimensions and exact performance indicators of nuclear arsenals, the key-energetic resources (the exact size of, for instance, oil, gas, coal and iron ore reserves), the states' second strike capacity (i.e. nuclear retaliation), the concrete capabilities of strategic aviation, or the elements rather related to "soft-power", such as – especially – economic indicators, from public debt to inflation rate, or from the unemploymnent rate to other standards regarding the quality of life. However, the data presented here are sufficient at this superficial level to illustrate that, aside from its nuclear arsenal, Russia's inclusion as a great power is as (i)legitimate or (un)motivated as of the European Union’s: the latter outranks the former in terms of population, GDP, currency and gold reserves, exports and imports, transportation system, and, at least in aggregated terms, even military expenditure in absolute terms (specifically $ 290 bil. compared to $ 124 bil.). Equally true, there is so far no coordinated, genuine, substantial common European defence and security policy, but the crucial idea in this context is a dynamical, and not static understanding and approach; though minor and incipient, structural-procedural modifications of EU in the direction of a common foreign and security policy are indisputable, and for the medium-term of two decades, judging by the quickness of post-Maastricht changes, the articulation of a genuine and consistent CFSP seems realistic. Furthermore, even nowadays, the EU is formulating and is following somehow its interests in global terms, even if, obviously, it does not have (for the moment) USA capacity, for example, to implement its objectives at the same time.

Secondly, in a reasoning subsequent to the previous one, that I will develop only partially in this paper and in-depth in a final chapter of the thesis (the one which compares and integrates analytically the four perspectives of security), the EU perspective distinguishes itself singularly in relation with the other three in that it is formulated and implemented not so much "top-down", i.e. from the upper systemic to the lower regional level of the international system, but rather "on the horizontal", "on the transversal", or, in adapting the analytical framework of Copenhagen School, at the subsystemic inter-regional level; its various institutional approaches of the Middle Eastern region in terms of security, as unfolded over the last few decades and anaylized in this semestrial paper, have addresed the local institutions and peoples rather as partners, or counterparts, in arrangements between two, at least nominally, equal parts. Combined, as I will detail further, with "axiological neutrality" of these approaches, unlike the US approach, Europen initiatives met at least a priori the premises of some considerable achievements. Why it has not happened like this covers most of the agenda of this paper.

Thirdly, also cognate to the previous two remarks, in an obvious contrast to the USA and China, and partially to Russia, the European approach is conceived in terms of proximity, of neighbourhood, an indirect evidence in this respect is the classification, after 2008, of the targeted Mediterranean states (actually, as I will show, not exclusively Mediterranean) within the wider framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

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Designed in the economy of this doctoral thesis as a stand-alone chapter (one of the four treating individually a perspective, by the side of the comparator and integrator final one), the study below analytically isolates the European perspective on security in the MENA area, a perspective institutionally and diachronically expressed in the so-called “Euro-Mediterranean Partnership" (EUROMED, EMP, hence the perspective's alternatively proposed label as "Mediterranean), a.k.a. "the Barcelona Process", initiated by the European Union in 1995 (as a successor to the former EEC’s Global Mediterranean Policy of 1972) and later – after a quasi-unanimous, albeit never official, failure acknowledgement – its 2008 re-launched version of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).

Of a combined descriptive and explicative profile, the analysis below assumes a three-fold objective which correspondingly structures it into three parts:

(i) to describe the evolutionary stages of the European perspective in its institutional expressions in time;

(ii) to show that the European perspective has failed in all those expressions (whereby failure shall be found and classified as such in the relation with the very European objectives assumed);

(iii) to explain why, classified as such despite not being a full, genuine, "top-down" approach, EU’s initiatives have failed, plus, on the same rationale, of why, predictably, the currently deployed UfM also doesn’t provide reasons for optimism – all these, within a critical analysis of the main strengths and weaknesses (in an absolute sense, and not relative of the comparison with the alternative or competitional perspectives, a mission reserved for the last chapter of the thesis).

Methodologically speaking, the investigation applies the concepts, instruments and methods summarized above in this paper: multi-level and multi-dimensional conceptualization of security within the parameters of the model proposed by the Copenhagen School; the representation of the security strategies in the contemporary international system (one in transition from unipolarism to multipolarism) as objects of some meaningful transformations in two directions – sectorialization and regionalization; the key-concept of regional security complex; the analytical triad actors – objectives – instruments; the analytical triad related to security referent subject – referent object – referent threat.

3.1 Institutional expressions and security sectors of the European perspective. A diachronic and sectorial overview

The European, a.k.a. "Mediterranean", perspective on security in the MENA region was shaped gradually during the '70s of the last century, pari passu with the development of some new outlooks and security practices of – at that time – European Economic Community (EEC). Diachronically, the three essential concerns of security of the EU related to the Middle East as they transpire nowadays – (a) the problem of energy resources; (b) regional stability and (c) the problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict – developed chronologically, in the mentioned order. Thus, the direct European interest for the Middle East – apart, of course, from the long European colonial past in the region – was (re)caused first by the “oil crisis” in 1973-1974 and its consequences on the economic security of the member states (a). Then, in the ’80s, the societal modifications inside EEC occured after massive immigration from the Middle East region, the Maghreb area in particular, engaged the rethinking of European priorities in the region in the sense of the interpretation of stability in the region as a component of own security (b). Finally, the proliferation on European territory of some Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in the ’80s-’90s first operated almost exclusively by the Palestinian militants determined the increase of the community concerns for the possibility of settling, or at least of a better management of the Arab-Israeli conflict (c); later, especially after September 11, 2001 – it is usually considered (that) – “[t]he foremost security concerns directing Europe’s attention to the Mediterranean are terrorist attacks, stemming from or connected to the fundamentalists in the southern and eastern Mediterranean, and the implications of immigration from the region to Europe” (Süel, 2008, pp.95)

Thus, in the Mediterranean perspective, own European dimensions or sectors of security underlying the Euro- Mediterranean initiatives are, in order of importance: societal, economic, military. They practically structured all the European initiatives of approach of the security issues of the Middle East, in both broad phases which can be detected diachronically at first sight and at a superficial level of approach: the first, extended to 2003, and the second, rethought in conjuction with the adoption of the European Security Strategy and enhancing the efforts of activation of CFSP and CSDP (foreign and security common European policies, respectively of security and defense) and explicitly formulated in June 2004, only two weeks after the G8 summit from Sea Island. But at a closer look, the last phase was practically abandoned , adopting in 2008 a new initiative, tentatively a revigorated one, under the form of the Union for the Mediterranean, which would signify a third phase. The following analytically isolates these phases both chronologically and as an institutional expression, and thematically, according to the sectors of security recognizably targeted within every initiative.

Corresponding to the three above-mentioned dimensions (societal, economic and military) the CEE/EU leaders adopted ever since the ’70s various initiatives of cooperative schemes meant to co-opt the non-European countries bordering the Mediterranean, i.e. Maghreb, in the hope that their socio-economic development will prevent the import of instability in Europe and, at the same time, will diminish the flow of immigrants from this area. The following initiatives are worth mentioning:

• the Global Mediterranean Policy (GMP);

• the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD);

• the bilateral agreements between EEC/EU on the one hand and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) on the other hand;

• the inter-parliamentary Conference on Security and Co-operation in the Mediterranean (CSCM);

• the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED);

• the 2004 tentative Strategic Partnership of the EU with the Mediterranean and the Middle East; respectively

• the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).

3.1.1. Initiatives and projects during the Cold War

The first concrete European initiative of the category defined and analyzed here was the so-called Global Mediterranean Policy, initiated in 1972 and translated into reality in a series of bilateral commercial agreements between, on the one hand, CEE and Syria, Iraq, Jordan, respectively Lebanon on the other hand, which actually represented an extension on the horizontal of the equivalent agreements concluded since 1969 with Tunisia and Morocco. The agreements, completed by additional protocols of financial and technical assistance meant for the four states, within the GMP to provide for coherence of this plurality of bilateral agreements, were based on the more ancient belief of CEE that the development of commercial and economic relationships is an important instrument in the efforts of improving the bilateral relations with the Arab world.

More precisely, the European initiative aimed at three objectives, associated to some distinct sectors of security:

– a commercial one, consisting in the safeguarding of preferential tariffs on European imports of agricultural products, relatable to the economic sector of security;

– a financial-economic one, referring to financial assistance granted to the non-European Mediterranean countries (hereinafter TMC);

– a social one, aiming at the improvement of the living conditions on the southern Mediterranean shore, an objective associable, together with the previous one, to the societal dimension of security, in order to reduce the influx of immigrants in Europe, considered to have enhanced intolerance, hostility, crime, xenophobia and terrorism (Tayfur, 2000, pp.127).

It can thus easily be seen that, though nominally addressing to the extra-European area, the last two objectives represented actually nothing else but means-instruments meant to improve the European community’s own security, hence the validity (including at the present, as I will try to show) that I recognize, of the assertion that "the EU accords should be driven, to a much more significant extent, by the needs of the Mediterranean participants (and not solely those of the EU)…" (Knio, 2013, pp.6).

General, if not even difuse in its purpose, with a restricted geographical and thematic applicability, preeminently oriented to its own security (i.e. European, and not of the extra-European area), incapacitated in its functions by the rigid bipolar mechanics itself of the Cold War and somewhat inaccurately called “Mediterranean” (actually addressing also to the states of the Middle East “classic”, more precisely from Mashriq), GMP predictibly exercised an extremely reduced impact on the states-target (Miller and Mishrif 2005: 94), also because of the outburst, in only one year, of the “oil crisis”.

The oil embargo of 1973-1974 directly and immediately determined, the initiation by CEE of the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD). This initiative did not have the expected effect either, on the one hand, because of the Arab-Israeli conflict and of its general implications, and on the other hand because of the divergences between the Europeans and the Arabs on the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in deliberations. Consecutively, the first DEA reunion took place in June 1975, and, moreover, the Dialogue was practically suspended in 1979, after signing the peace agreement in Camp David and the subsequent expulsion of Egypt from the Arab League (al-Dajani, 1980, pp.81-108). In the same causative register, but from a deeper level of analysis, it was mainly the systemic stalemate of the Cold War dynamics that has esentially obstructed any coherent European Mediterranean policy, with the EEC subset fully subsumed to the Western block aggregated around the USA as antagonist superpower to USSR, and any regional initiative in the MENA region entirely built in the East-West confrontational logic (Tayfur, 2000, pp.126). Therefore, this is the reason why, in the EAD and GMP forms, including of "the failure" of the Euro-Maghreb partnership (Tayfur, 2000, pp.126), "EU's relationship with its southern periphery has been somewhat neglected" (Knio, 2013, pp.6).

3.1.2. The Mediterranean approach in the post Cold War security environment

Later, the major modifications of the international system after the Cold War, such as unleashing the international dynamics from the straitjacket of bipolar confrontation and “regionalization” of security concerns, naturally determined the reassertion of the security interests and initiatives of the EU addressed to the non-European Mediterranean states. The trigger factor might have been, albeit the only temporary, a mitigation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, expressed under the form of negotiations started in Madrid in 1991 and completed by the Oslo Accords of 1993 between Israel and the PLO, just like the Islamist victory in the 1992 elections in Algeria boosted in its turn the European security concerns in the region. The result of this reinsertion of the Mediterranean on the common security of – starting with 7 February 1992, the date of adoption of Maastricht Treaty – the European Union consisted in a relatively disarticulated so-called "Renovated Mediterranean Policy". Formalized in 1992, it grouped on the one side the EU member states, and on the other side 13 non-EU bordering member states and essentially aimed at five lines of action:

– to soften the social counter-effects of Structural Adjustment Programs;

– support of SMEs;

– environment protection;

– reinforcement of horizontal cooperation;

– enhancing protection of human rights

(Lister, 2001, Khader, 2009, pp.23; Moriamé, 2013, pp.5; Knio, 2013, pp.58-61).

As for this new initiative, one can hardly say it was a success, or, on the contrary, a failure, since – essentially – it was shortlived (1992-1995); at the same time with the efforts of structural-procedural consolidation of the initiative, multiple discussions and negotiations continued for a reconfiguration of the Mediterranean approaches, which culminated in 1994 with the adoption of the “Declaration on the importance of the Mediterranean for the EU” at the Essen Summit, a meeting of Heads of State or Government (Jünemann, 2009, pp.33-34). Starting from here, in only a few months, probably the most important European Mediterranean initiative until now was born, important at least under the aspect of participation and ambition associated to objectives: the "Euro-Mediterranean Partnership" (EUROMED; EMP).

Inaugurated on the occasion of the Barcelona Conference (hence the alternative title of the partnership of “the Barcelona Process”) of the Foreign Ministers of 27-28 November 1995, and grouping on the one side the 15 EU member states at that time, and on the other side the 12 non-member Mediterranean countries, the Partnership assumed three major objectives, each associated to a "basket" or "chapter":

(1) within the "Political and Security Chapter" – defining a common peace and stability area by promoting political and security dialogue between the member states;

(2) within the "Economic and Financial Chapter" – building a common area of prosperity by an economic and financial partnership and gradual establishment of a free trade zone between the EU and the non-European Mediterranean states (economic and financial chapter);

(3) finally, within the "Social, Cultural and Human Chapter" (correspondent to the political-military, economic and societal sectors of security in the framework of the Copenhagen School) – the rapprochement between peoples by a social, cultural and human partnership, meant to encourage the understanding between cultures and the exchange between civil societies (social, cultural and human chapter) (EU, 2005).

The following table summairizes the EC/EU security initiatives regarding MENA starting with the ‘60s, listing the context, security sector (societal, societal+ economic, societal+ economic + military) and objectives pursued. It can be observed that pregressiveley, from GMP to UfM the security sector and the correlated objectives were extended:

Chronological summarizing view of EC/EU security initiatives regarding the MENA region

EUROMED founding member states, 1995

The above picture depicts the 15 EU member states and the 12 non- member Mediterranean states that founded EUROMES in 1995. Structurally speaking, the main bodies of the EUROMED were four: the Euro-Mediterranean Summit (held every five years) (took place twice after EUROMED’s founding summit); the Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Foreign Ministers (annual meetings) (have met 13 times between 1995 and 2007); the Euro-Mediterranean Committee, comprising senior officials from the EU troika and one delegate for each member state; the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum (EMPF) (grouping representatives of the European Parliament and MENA national legislatures) – took place in 1998 (Brussels), February 2000, September 2001 and June 2002 (Italy) and has been replaced in March 2004 by a Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA) comprising 130 Euro-deputies plus 130 non-member TMC national MPs (Süel 2008: 99-100).

In a synthetic analysis of the EMP activity between 1995 and 2003 (the latter was the year of formulation of the proposal of extension of the partnership “east of Jordan”, see below), four substantive observations can be drawn.

Firstly, EUROMED certainly is the most important of the European security initiatives addressed to the Arab Mediterranean states. This importance is highlighted by three aspects:

(a) the partnership is the most comprehensive cooperation agreement addressed to the Arab world by EEC/EU since the establishment of the Community in 1957 – the partnership framework comprehensively covers political, security, economic, financial, social, cultural and human issues of the three chapters of the initiative;

(b) the amount of agreements subject to EUROMED included the commitment of all participant states to a “sustainable and balanced economic and social development, in order to attain the objective of creating a common area of prosperity ”;

(c) the partnership opened the way to a comprehensive and coherent attempt to implement political-economic reforms at a large scale in the Arab world by economic cooperation, financial assistance and establishing until 2010 a free trade area for all the member states.

The long-term objective, and the most important for the time being, of the “Barcelona process” consisted in the creation of MEFTA (Mediterraneean-European Free Trade Area) by multi-bilateral agreements, accompanied by processes of economic and political structural reform, measures of confidence-building and cooperation in the line of foreign policy and security (Vasconcelos, 2002, pp. 113). As concrete steps to achieve this free trade area with the EU – I repete, the most ambitious objective of the partnership, in relation with which we should judge the (un)success of EUROMED, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan adopted first, on 8 May 2001, the Declaration of Agadir, whereby they undertook to liberalize the trade between them, and on 25 February 2004 concluded the Agadir Agreement (signed at Rabat, effective as of 2007), of establishment of a Mediterranean-Arab Free Trade Agreement (MAFTA) (Miller and Mishrif, 2005, pp. 95-98; Rhein, 1999, pp.11).

Secondly, it should be emphasized that – with the marginal exception of Jordan, the Mediterranean perspective does not include in the delimitation of the area, that non-EU member states, only the Arab and non-Arab states bordering the Mediterranean, a geographical restriction justified by the limitation to this area of the main concerns of societal security of the EU. Following the EU enlargemement round of 2004, ten years since its establishment, EUROMED had got, at least formally, to include at that time 25 EU member states and the remaining 10 non-member TMC – Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt in the Maghreb / North Africa (alongside Lybia as an observer starting 1999), Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan (EU, 2005). The consequence, one might say unfortunate, of this delimitation which cut through the MENA RSC, will be analyzed below, during the discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the European Mediterranean perspective.

Thirdly, EUROMED activity was meant to perform in two complementary dimensions – one bilateral and one regional. In the bilateral dimension, EU would have cooperted individually with all the non-memb er states engaged in the Partnership. The most important forms of cooperation were regulated by the Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreements negotiated individually with the signatory member states and approaching extremely varied aspects: industrial, agricultural, foreign trade, technical and financial assistance, environmental, transport and communications, of scientific cooperation, financial crime, money laundering. Such agreements were signed by the EU with Tunisia (1995), Morocco (1996), the Palestinian Authority (1997), Jordan (1997), Egypt (2001), the Lebanon (2002), and Syria (2004), the first 5 of these agreements were effective as of 1 January 2005, and the remainder 3 of them were in process of ratification at that time (Miller and Mishrif 2005: 99). The regional dimension of EUROMED simultaneously covered political, economic and cultural issues and was meant to exercise a meaningful strategic impact on the common issues of the region, but with the observance of national complementarities.

Fourthly, it should be properly emphasized that the main concern of regional security from the Mediterranean perspective was not (and is not) the military sector, but the societal and economic sectors, the reason why European policy (used to) supports predominantly democratization and economic development (understood as political and economic sectors of modernization) of the states bordering as a means of providing regional security. But besides the immediate socio-economic issues and confined to the Mediterranean space, in the issue of the sub-region of the Persian Gulf of the Middle East and of the sub-RCS homonym, EU policy has constantly seemed subject to the American one, focused on the military aspects of stability and predictibility (Bilgin, 2004, pp.34), notwithstanding that, during the years after the military intervention in Iraq in 2003, manifested extremely visible the symptoms of a widening of a transatlantic cleavage, especially in the issue of the Iraqi invasion, but also of the policy related to the issue of the nuclear program of Iran. Yet, as a rule, and because of the obviously lower capabilities as compared to the American ones and to the internal division on the edge of CFSP, the EU followed in the matters of political and military security of the Persian Gulf the political line of the USA. These divergencies seemed to worsen and to become even more important in the context of the G8 summit between 8-10 June 2004, at Sea Island, given the potential perceived at that time to create a rivalry between on the one hand, a US-dominated G8 and, on the other hand, the EU concerning the regional security approach in the Middle East.

In the quadruple context of (a) the worsened deterioration of the transatlantic relation immediately after the military intervention in Iraq, (b) connected to the European efforts for a better coordination and integration of the security and defense policies of the EU member states , (c) inefficiency (that I will demonstrate further on) quasi unanimously, if only tacitly, recognized of the EUROMED project, respective and consecutive to the previous element – even if, admittedly, only speculatively from the position of the undersigned as an retrospective observer – (d) understanding the fact that the separation MENA-RSC between states bordering the Mediterranean and the rest is one mainly artificial, "top-down" and even counter-productive, at the middle of the last decade the EU has reconfigured its security approach under the form of what we could call an "extended Mediterranean perspective" on MENA region.

Of the four contextual factors mentioned above, the officially admitted, and the most important at first sight, hence analytically sealable easily is the second. In this respect, the driving source of the reconfiguration of the Mediterranean approach of the seems to be the obligations assumed by the EU member states in the Amsterdam Treaty (signed on the 2nd of October 1997, entered into force on the 1st of May 1999), with its substantial amendments brought to the EU constitutive Treaty of Maastricht (1992) and which aimed at the acceleration of the efforts of creating an identity and of European institutions own security, or, more concretely, increasing CFSP’s efficiency and gradual articulation of a common security and defense policy (CSDP). Within the framework of the new treaty of 1997/1999 and in the particular-punctual context of the demonstration of the low performances of the Europeans in the military field on the occasion of the Kosovo conflict, the European Councils in Köln and Helsinki (1999) launched the general framework of EU's CSDP, which provided, among others, the integration of the capabilities of the Western European Union (WEU) into the EU structure, the setting up of new political and military structure of the Union and the creation of a European Rapid Reaction Force.

In this direction, the key-year 2003 recorded – not accidentally, in the light of the transatlantic divergences on the military intervention in Iraq – a number of new concrete initiatives in the direction of the articulation of a unitary and coherent policy of security and defense of the European Union. One of them was the formulation of the document A Secure Europe in a Better World, subtitled "European Security Strategy" – a syntagm already consecrated colloquially. The document makes five references to the Middle Eastern region, rearrangeable under the form of three ideas in my reading:

– the display of the genuine global emerging ambitions of power of the EU, obvious in the syntagm "our neighbours in the Middle East" (pp. 14);

– the concern for the WMD issue, the official document warned about the "entering [of] a new and dangerous period that raises the possibility of a WMD arms race, especially in the Middle East (pp. 3)

– and then resumes the idea of "nuclear activities… and proliferation in the Middle East" as "of concern to Europe" (pp. 6);

– the security risks for Europe caused by the regional conflict status in general, but "above all in the Middle East" (pp. 4),

– the "resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict" considered "a strategic priority for Europe" (pp. 8).

The document itself and its adoption are significant : for the first time, EU was trying to articulate its own security strategy at the continental level, distinguishing itself as a global power, a vector of some top-down security perspectives, just like the United States, and on its security agenda, the Middle East region was ranking visibly high.

Thus reformulated the referent threats for the European Union of the new millennium in relation with the region under discussion, in the context of transatlantic disagreements enhancement at that time does no longer seem accidental the fact that only one week after the G8 summit and the launching by the group of the partnership initiatives with the area of the so-called "Broader Middle East and North Africa" (BMENA; discussed below in this thesis), the European Council of 17-18 June 2004 adopted, as its own initiative, the project of the working group "an EU Strategic Partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East". This document, which resumes the idea of contouring at least desirable of UE as a global player, a possible alternative to the US and G8 initiatives in the same region, makes concretely and most welcome the shift from the Mediterranean to an integrated zone of MENA-RSC, even if not under this explicit title, but under the practically equivalent one of "Mediterranean and the Middle East". The marker of this expansion within an "extended perspective" could be the syntagm "east of Jordan", with implicit or explicit reference in the text to Iran, Iraq and Yemen (pp. 9, 11). Interestingly enough, the text admits the diversity of the targeted MENA area, but reiterates its authors’ belief in the possibility of identifying some common challenges of the states involved (pp. 2).

However, the document seems rather a political declaration, or an intent, without really assumed and explained strategic objectives, without instruments and concrete methods expected in the pursuit of objectives, and respectively oriented again, if only tacit, exclusively on European security. Thus, the assumed general objective of the so-called "strategic partnership" seems as noble, as it is general-illusory: "to promote a ring of well-governed countries" in the MENA area (pp. 2), or, as reformulated, "the development of a prosperous, secure and vibrant Mediterranean and Middle East" (pp. 4).

Moreover, even if the text indicates as "single-overarching concern" the large number of youth in the area that create an ever-increasing demand for education and fulfilling employment" (pp. 3), the same non-realist or basically political nature of the initiative is transparent in the no more than ten "primary political concerns": "good governance, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, gender, respect for the rights of minorities, cooperation on non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, conflict prevention and resolution, and economic development… “(pp. 4). One cannot but wonder how many secondary concerns EU could have in regard to the region, if the primary ones number ten.

Finally, the so-called "instruments and frameworks" envisaged as supporting the implementation of the strategic partnership (pp. 17-18) are by no means new or at least refined or developed versions in regard to the old ones of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: this point is reaffirmed, under the more comprehensive umbrella of ENP, as being the interaction framework with the non-member TMC; as for Libya, its incorporation into the EUROMED is considered pending on domestic reforms; Mauritania is targeted within AMU-EU cooperation, and Iran and Iraq, theoretically, within GCC-EU cooperation, but with the specification that at that moment the relationships with Iraq where actually non-existing, and the negotiations with Iran on a trade and cooperation agreement were frozen, pending on Iran's human rights problems and their nuclear file (pp. 15-16). Hence, it shoult not come as a surprise that the EU security of MENA was to be changed once more, as the extended perspective had virtually no follow up whatsoever for four years.

3.1.3. The last attempt of recovery: the Union for the Mediterranean

In the direct context of the failure of the previous attempts, already highlighted above and detailed further on, with EUROMED practically abolished (although never oficially admitted as such), the year 2008 recorded a new European institutional initiative of approach on security in the MENA region, an attempt of resuscitation of the late Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). The envisaged continuity of the latter with the former is reflected both in the takeover of the former member states of EUROMED and of the adjacent institutional infrastructure, and in the objectives assumed by the new organization.

Thus, established on 13 July 2008, the new UfM included, on the one hand, the 27 EU member states at that time, besides the European Commission as a distinct entity, and on the other hand, the 4 non-member European states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monaco and Montenegro), Turkey, and other 10 states of the MENA area (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and Tunisia), as well as Libya as an observer state. Graphically reproduced depending on institutional continuity, the year of the accession and the area of residence, current membership of UfM looks as below:

UfM membership by year and area

(Source: UfM website)

The same institutional continuity is also transparent in the assumed objectives and the prospective theme structuring of EU partnership with the MENA area. Having set as its fundamental goal the promotion of peace and prosperity along the Mediterranean shores, the UfM was structured into four chapters: Political and Security; Economy and Trade; Socio-cultural; Justice and Interior Affairs. The first and a part of the fourth overlap the political and military security sectors, the second to the economic one, and the third and the first part of the last to the societal one. In the same idea of the "heritage" transferred from EUROMED to UfM, the latter practically took over the last of the four chapters, introduced in the 10th anniversary Euro-Mediterranean summit held in Barcelona in 2005, just like the UfM founding summit in Paris, from 2008, also endorsed the EUROMED initial objective of creating a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area. Last but not least, it has been noticed, the new Union took over faithfully and used extremely frequently the key-term "spirit of partnership" (Jünemann, 2009, pp. 51), the one meant, if only implicitly, to dissociate the European initiative from the rigorous "top-down" such as, for example, the American one.

Subsidiary to the four chapters mentioned, within the media presentation in the margin of the founding summit of UfM, its leaders designed six projects meant to settle a few pressing issues which affected the MENA area. Such projects, detailed in formulation at the reunion of the foreign ministers of the 43 member states in Marseille, November 2008, were:

(1) the de-pollution of the Mediterranean, a project aiming at the improvement of the local water management, the protection of the local biodiversity, etc.;

(2) the establishment of international shipping routes and motorways meant to improve the circulation of people and commodities throughout the Mediterranean;

(3) the creation of a civil protection system meant to enhance the prevention and responses to either natural or man-made disasters;

(4) in the sector of alternative, renewable energies, the creation of a Mediteranean solar plan, aiming at turning TMC into solar energy producers and then at circulating the resulting electricity throughout the region;

(5) in the sector of education, the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean University, achieved in 2008 at Piran, Slovenia, when the establishment of a similar university in Fes, in Morocco, was expected also; (6) in the business sector, a project of promoting SMEs from across the Mediterranean.

Retrospectively, we may say about too few of these projects that they have been actually implemented, UfM seems indeed a "project that never took off" (Censini, 2012). The next section of this semestrial paper will illustrate descriptively a few of the major failures of the European security initiatives in the MENA region, and then they will be evaluated critically in a partial analysis of their main strengths and weaknesses.

3.2. A critical evaluation of the European perspective

My affirmation expressed above as a foreword, that, in all its chronology and institutional expressions, the European perspective was a failure, is not in the least an exaggeration or too harsh an utterance. The opinions of the field literature dedicated to this perspective spectacularly converge in support of thid assertion, the Europan perspective being labelled, depending on the author, as a "a failure" (Youngs, 2006), a "failure" and a "big disappointment" (Brocza, 2012), a "two steps forward, one step back" type of project (Jünemann, 2009), etc. Diachronically, or better said broken down according to the analytically isolated institutional analysis, what Knio said about the policies subject to the late GMP applies in my opinion equally to EUROMED and to UfM: these initatives were "vague, ad hoc and lacked coherence in their overall structure", being in addition "reactive, not proactive" (Knio, 2013, pp. 7) In the same critic register, the former partnership fully abandoned in 2008 was reproached "the complexity of its institutional design, its limited popular legitimacy and visibility", which seems to hamper its potential success (Süel, 2008, pp. 101); as for the last institutional version proposed, that of UfM, this one, as already pointed out, is considered "a project that never took off" (Censini, 2012) – "launched with so much pomp, [it] did never really start working. From the beginning, the project was an empty shell that was never filled with life by either side" (Brocza, 2012).

Where exactly did all the European intiatives fail?

An observer would find it very easy, of course, to refer to the very fundamental goal of these initiatives, i.e. to promote peace and prosperity in the targeted region and to conclude, at the most simple overview of the current regional state of affairs, that this overarching goal has not been achieved. But, such a simplification would bear the methodological risk of attributing causality, more precisely the risk of holding the EU as exclusively accountable for a situation in whose determinism a lot of other factors are interfering. For the avoidance of any risk, I will confine myself to a brief and purely descriptive exposure of some failure fully associable to European initiatives, in a time frame delimited to the after-Cold War period, and then I will synthesize analytically the main strengths and weknesses common to all the European initiatives.

At first sight, the European approach has failed primarily, but not exclusively in its political and security basket, the most easily recognizable failure throughout the whole after-Cold War period. Concretely, the EUROMED had been launched in 1995 with big hopes for conflict resolution, security, peace and economic cooperation. In time though, it has been reduced primarily to economic and cultural cooperation (Süel, 2008, pp.102). Seven years since launching, the so trumpeted "Euro-Mediterranean Charter for Peace and Security" had already turned into a "miserable failure" (Asseburg 2005: 2), postponed sine die after the collapse of the Middle East Peace Process negotiations in 2000 (Emerson and Noutcheva, 2005, pp.4), and the failure was all the more obvious, as the leaders of the member states left the summit discussions the same year (2002), allegedly as a protest against Israel policy in the Palestinian territories.

Two more years later, simultaneously with the massive wave of EU extension in 2004, the integration of EUROMED into the European Neighbourhood Policy delivered the Mediterranean policy a deadly (especially, but not exclusively) financial blow.

The year 2005, EUROMED anniversary year, remained one extremely suggestive in illustrating the failures discussed here. Besides the political and security sector, this year also recorded the failure of the economic sector, where the MEFTA creation deadline was missed (Brocza, 2012), as the project was postponed for 2010, a missed term also. To this day, there still isn't a free trade zone between the EU and MTC. A proof of the dimensions of this failure, the very anniversay summit in Barcelona (27-28 November 2005) has been attended by just 2 of the 40 head of states or governments invited – the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Asseburg, 2005, pp.1). Even the present participants, at the level of state secretaries or lower, failed to agree on a Final Declaration, the only result consisting in agreeing with a five year programme, never implemented. It was practically, though never officially recognized, the yearf when, in a medical metaphor, was "found the death" of EUROMED, even the official website of the partnership admitted that "the new realities and challenges of the 21st century make it necessary to update the Barcelona declaration and a new Action Plan".

During the transition from EUROMED to UfM, the 2006 events (I refer here the Hamas' electoral victory and the same year's Lebanon-Syria tensions follwong the assasination of prime minister Hariri) demonstrated once more, already redundant, not only the volatility of the situation in the region from the political and military point of view, but also the incapability of the European Union in the regional security issues. In the same register, shortly after the launching of UfM, Israel's military operation "Cast Lead" during the winter of 2008-2009 once again triggered the Union's boycotting by many Arab states' leaders, which may explain why the UfM Secretariate was established only in 2010, two full years after the Union's launch.

And with special reference to UfM, this seems rather a ghost-institution, a useless form of bureaucratization, up to disability. Moreover, the very establishment of the Union generated various dissensions and divergencies; in fact, the initiative was a purely French one, at the national level, and not European, more precisely of president Sarkozy, who had included the idea in his domestic election program. Further to his re-election, his idea faced, of course, various reserves and objections at the European level, so that, in particular after the amendments formulated by Germany, the French initiative was modified, instead of 6 UE member states, as in the formula proposed, getting to incorporate the EU as a whole, and the name expected by Sarkozy, that of "Mediterranean Union", turning into the current "Union for the Mediterranean". The summit of the organization of 2010 was postponed several times – something very rare at this level, which meant actually missing a new deadline for the establishment of MEFTA. Later, as an exemplary fact of the sound inefficiency of UfM, this organization being not only inherently powerless, but also plagued by its own domestic economic problems, the secretary general of the Union at that moment, Ahmed Masadeh, resigned in January 2011, explicitely invoking UfM's inability to (minimally satisfactory) respond to the Maghreb unrests in the context of the so-called "Arab Spring" (Brocza, 2012). The same passivity was recorded also in relation with the turmoil in Egipt in 2012, or the rampant crisis generated by the terrorists of the so-called "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq, not to speak about the significant problems of the EU to impose its interests, including those related to MENA, at the global level, in the interaction with the other great global players – see also the declaration of the Russian president Putin of 6 June 2013, that Russia will permanently keep a navy squadron in the Mediterranean.

Beyond the "hard" sectors of security, where EU obviously cannot yet compete against the US or Russia, the EU failed even in the "soft" sectors. For example, of the six projects above-mentioned announced under the umbrella of UfM in 2008, we could hardly distinguish two concrete progresses, minimum too, not to say insignificant, these last years: in the project related to renewable energies, in May 2012, the UfM member states signed a Memorandum of Understanding related to the development of long-term strategies "Mediterranean Solar Plan" and "Desert Power 2050"; in the educational field, the Euro-Mediterranean University at Fes, Morocco, finally started in 2014, with a master cycle.

Besides this minor progress, from 1990 to the present, the sequence of institutional formulas RMP – EUROMED – UfM has fundamentally failed in achieving its basic objectives; during these 25 year period, the Union's members have yet to agree on a consensually accepted definition of the very word "terrorism"; the really sensitive issues of Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, not to mention the Arab-Israeli conflict, remain almost unaddressed to this date; economically, in terms of the envisaged prosperity, the MENA countries' negative trade balance has been aggravated; furthermore, the EU, as I shall detail below, has been dethroned by China, the US and other non-EU states from its dominant position in MENA's foreign trade; essentially, one can hardly argue in favor of a prospect of security, nor of prosperity, in the region, much less in favor of a contribution of EU in this respect, so that, it has been somewhat provocatively argued, "the culture of the Mediterranean is reverting to its stagnant 18th-century past rather than leading the 21st century" (V.D. Hansen, 2013).

Beyond this easily recognizable suite, but non-systematized at the same time, of failures, the European perspective on security in the MENA region does have some advantages, not only disadvantages, or strengths, not only weaknesses. In the analytical systematization that I am proposing here, there would be three main "strengths" of the approach, accompanied by as many "weaknesses". The strenghts attributable to the European approach would be: (a1) its so-called "axiological neutrality", which catalyzes its credibility, one significantly larger than in the case of "pure", "hard" top-down approaches such as the American one; (a2) catalyzing economic development in the region, aiming at general prosperity, thanks to the fact that, unlike other global powers, the EU has been traditionally focusing also on "soft" security issues; (a3) its joint Arab-Israeli approach, one still unparalleled by its competitors at the global level. Symmetrically, its main weakness reside in (b1) its major geopolitical incoherence, an already foreworded deficiency hereabove; (b2) the developing asymmetry in the relationship between the two regions; (b3) the lack of capabilities needed to rival its global competitors, to military substantiate its soft security approach, and to integrate diversity in a genuine way.

The first major strength refers to the axiological neutrality of the outlook, which, is true, attracts few enthusiastic followers in the MENA population in the classic meaning of the region, but just as few firm opponents – which may turn into a decisive advantage in relation with the alternative perspectives and practices. Unlike former colonial powers at the national level, or regional rivals, or even the US especially after September 11, 2001, the EU is not perceived as an enemy, it does not generate extreme hostility reactions, and meets the prerequisites of a really credible approach, or at least perceived as such. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that the level of the political leaders and of the civil society in the MENA area embraced optimistically the Partnership initiated by the EU. For example, the Tunisian foreign minister at the time, Muhammad Selim al-Sayed, anticipated that EUROMED would have provided for the Mediterranean a historical opportunity which enables the area the formulation of a comprehensive strategy of development. In the same spirit, Moufeed Shehab, the president at the time of the University of Cairo, considered the Partnership as a real force capable of influencing the strategy and perspectives of a large number of Arab countries, a force which might have a meaningful impact on the decisions and on the future itself of the Arab world (apud Miller and Mishrif, 2005, pp. 96).

A second advantage or strength, quantifiable and at the same time confirming partially the above-cited anticipations, consists in the concrete economic benefits brought to the signatory Arab states by means of the Partnership. The premise, widely accepted by the specialists and fundamental to EU philosophy, is that economic, social and political development is able to facilitate regional stability. By means of the two main financial instruments associated to EUROMED –MEDA program and the European Investment Bank respectively, EU granted the partener Arab states financial and cooperation assistance amounting to 5.3 billion € for the cycle 1996-2000 and 5.5 billion € for the term 2001-2005. Broken down, within the MEDA program, for the term 1995-2003 5,458 billion € were allocated incorporated under the form of some programs and projects of cooperation and other support activities, and the European Investment Bank supplied under the form of a loan over 14 billion € from 1974 to the present day (EUROMED/EU 2005).

Beyond the quantifiable aspects, in an overview it is worth pointing out that the instruments of cooperation within EUROMED operate in accordance with the regulations and rules of MENA; thus, by means of the Partnership, the Arab states were involved in the major structural modifications of the global economy occured after the Cold War, hence logically the chance of increasing their economic competitiveness consecutively to the compatibilization with the global rules and principles related to reciprocity, access on the markets and transparency of trade and investments. Thus, this increase of competitiveness is actually equivalent to the socio-economic modernization and implicitly economic security, in other words the very premise that EU considers necessary to attain the objective of stabilization of the MENA region. In substance, though “exogenous” to the addressed region, the Mediterranean perspective highlights the societal and economic dimensions of regional security, providing subsequently viable long-term solutions, in the sense assumed in which it addresses to the “causes” (deficit of modernization) and not to the “effects” (such as the terrorist phenomenon). And the increased role that the Union started to play in the configuration of the economic structure and processes of the Arab member states of EUROMED may be illustrated at first glance by exposure of the share of EU as their commercial partner:

Aggregated value of the imports and exports with the EU in the total trade of the non-EU member states of EUROMED, 2003

Source: CIA World Factbook 2005, EU Eurostat News Release, 2003

As for the " UfM age", the equivalent figures keep indicating a substantial share of the EU in all the commercial relations with TMC even if a slight diminution is noted, that I will deal with later. For 2013, based on the data supplied by IMF, the situation is the following:

EU share of TMC export-import relations, 2013 (%)

Source: IMF, apud EU website

Of course, the argument is a general one at the superficial level too. A deeper analysis would necessarily consider the trade balance of the TMC-EU relationships, static and dynamic alike, it would analyze the volumes of such commercial exchange comparatively too, between the EU and or the states or economic organizations, such elements which, as I will resume partially later, relativizes this "strength" of the European approach. Furthermore, with methodological implications, one can indeed argue that “how much the EMP contributes to economic cooperation remains doubtful” (Süel, 2008, pp.102), just like the general economic status itself in the MENA area is one liable to severely question the benefits brought along by the EU approaches, in the sense that some voices openly assert that "the economies of the Islamic rim of the Mediterranean are in shambles" (V.D. Hansen, 2013).

But going back to systematization, a third “strength” recognized by the analysist of the European perspective in question consists in the success, partially comparable maybe only with the Camp David Agreement, of EUROMED/UfM to bring in the same framework of dialogue and cooperation Israel together with Arab countries (Süel, 2008, pp. 101; Emerson and Noutcheva, 2005, pp.1; Bilgin, 2004, pp. 35; Vasconcelos, 2002, pp.114). It is true, the evolution of the situation on Palestinian territories obstruct more often than not the internal dynamics of EUROMED/UfM – as in 2002 or 2008-2009, when the Arab leaders left the discussions in protest against Israel’s policy in Palestinian teritories, but the key-issue in this respect is the very fact that the two warring parties are, formally, at the same table of dialogue, which, if only theoretically and a priori, creates the necessary premises, even if not sufficient, of a better conflict management.

Major strengths and weakness of the European perspective.

A simplified model

All these three strengths are, unfortunately, fully equalled, if not even overwhelmingly surpassed by the weaknesses. The first and foremost of the latter category consists in the already repeated above disadvantage of geopolitical incoherence of European initiatives in their full institutional continuity.

UfM member states map superimposed on regional security complexes

adapt. apud B. BUZAN, O. Wæver Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security,

Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. xxvi

This major shortcoming practically covers three aspects. The first resides in the artificial cross-cutting of the MENA-RSC frontiers, as graphically illustrated in the map above. The geographic-political coverage of UfM (and once of EUROMED, with the ephemeral exception of the Mediterranean "extended" perspective, but one never transposed into practice) is only partially overlapping the external frontiers of the targeted RSC, counterproductively ignoring all its natural, constitutive elements, in particular the amity-enmity relationship, and actually the very generic essence of a security complex, that its component states cannot, realistically speaking, formulate the security strategies apart from one another. Or, as shown by the above map, the UfM includes the Maghreb states, plus Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian authority, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, but fatefully excludes most of the Arab peninsula and the Mashriq, both of them integral and unseparable parts of the MENA-RSC. The idea that Syria or Jordan for instance could formulate minimally valid security strategies neglecting, say, Iraq or Iran, is illusory. Furthermore, it includes Mauritania (in fact an insulator state, as shown above), accepted in 2007, besides Albania, as a EUROMED member, the two states having at that time institutional relations with the EU in other contexts (Brocza, 2012). Moreover, joining in the same frame the so-called "Mediterranean" as for instance Ireland, the Baltic, Mauritania and Turkey, speaks for itself in relation with the interests and authenticity of the security concerns of the states engaged in the partnership, hence the problems of coherence and continuity of the concretely implemented policies. I think it is not redundant to point out that: restricting the cooperation framework to the states bordering the Mediterranean, with two insignificant reactions, establishes an artificial internal separation and hence, unsuccessful, counterproductive, if not harmful, of the regional complex of security of MENA; laudable in intention, the socio-economic agreements of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation of the "soft security" type, laudable in intention, at least declared, are nevertheless incapabile of breaking the organic relationships between the Maghreb states and the rest of the countries of the Middle East, such relationships based on natural common security interests. Under this aspect, though concerned with societal aspects, the European perspective contains in its turn top-down structural elements, ignoring the realities and zonal interests of the actors engaged in the security complex of MENA.

UfM’s geographical overlapping with other transregional initiatives and projects

Directly related to the prior aspect, the second one of the same nature refers to the multitude of institutional and procedureal overlappings, redundancies and parallelisms attracted by UfM. The map above shows significant geopolitical areas of overlapping among various security initiatives addressing more or less the same key-area discussed here: the EUROMED/UfM institutional formulas, the 1998 cooperation agreement between the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council; the 1990 so-called "5+5 Dialogue" (incidentally, an initiative remarkably coherent from the geopolitical point of view) signed on the one hand by France, Italy, Malta, Portugal, and Spain, and on the other hand Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia; the 1994 established NATO Mediterranean Dialogue, signed within TMC with Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia; the American "Greater Middle East" geostrategic entity and the partnering US CENTCOM defined area; G8's BMENA initiative; the previous EU extended Mediterranean perspective adjacent to the “EU Strategic Partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East”.

Thirdly, in the same general register of geopolitical incoherence, another weakness consists in the incoherence at the very level of the EU concerning its Mediterranean / MENA approach, especially the multilateral-bilateral indetermination, but also the almost "rogue-like" initiatives of some of its member states and the subsequent rivalries between them. And this internal incoherence seems to have characterized EU throughout the post – Cold War period; by some opinion, it had actually been "the power play between Germany and France in the 1990s [that] turned the attention of the latter towards the [Mediterranean] region” (Süel, 2008, pp. 95).

Subsequently, the main problem of new approach, aggravatingly overlapping the above-mentioned one, was generated by the incorporation of the Mediterranean initiative as an integrant part of ENP. The latter was at least intended to be "much more results-focused" than the EMP (Asseburg, 2005, pp. 286) and also enhance the EU's regional policies framework. However, apart from the significant deprivation of financial resources of EUROMED following this subsumption, it should be pointed out that, initially, ENP was expected to provide for a common framework of reference in relation with the states which had become new EU neighbours through the EU eastern expansion. The MTC were only integrated in the ENP concept after persistent demands from France, Spain and Italy (Brocza, 2012). Moreover, “ENP’s bilateral focus reinforces the inclination to ignore the tedious regional dimension of the process” (Asseburg, 2005, pp.5) while, in the overall picture, in the last years of EUROMED, the European Commission seems to have clearly favored the ENP rather than Mediterranean initiatives (Robert Aliboni apud Suel, 2008, pp.104).

Then, the establishment itself of UfM has highlighted the same issue of a unilateralist slippages of certain key-states of EU with well-defined interests in the geopolitical area of the Mediterranean basin. More precisely, as I already mentioned, it was the president of France, a country which has been traditionally regarding the Mediterranean as their natural "backyard" (Süel, 2008, pp.95), who first advanced the idea of a Mediterranean Union during his presidential electoral campaign of 2007. Interestingly enough, Sarkozy's initial project envisaged as partners of TMC, alongside France, only the so-called "PIGSC" countries, i.e. Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain and Cyprus. As it has been rightfully argued, "albeit of indisputable unilateralism", the French initiative "would at least have made some geopolitical sense" (Milne, 2011). After the electoral campaign, the re-sworn president Sarkozy continued with his idea, seeking support of the PIGSC countries' leaders, without however discussing it with the European Commission or Council. At a time when EUROMED had not been officially abolished yet, this unilateralism seems to have aroused fears not only within TMC, especially Turkey, Algeria, and Libya, but also among EU member states such as Spain. However, the most intense criticism came from Germany, following the open objections, the "Mediterranean Union" turned into UfM, and it included not only the 6 initially envisaged states, but all the – at that moment – 27 EU member states (Brocza 2012). Retrospectively, Censini’s evaluation (2012) seems legitimate: launched independently by Sarkozy with "anachronistic grandeur", the UfM project gradually lost relevance, and has been fundamentally lacking in idealism, courage and innovation.

The second major weakness of the European security initiatives addresing the MENA area resides in the constitutive asymmetry of the transregional relation, an asymmetry developed and analyzable on two levels: the level of the link between the rather homogenous block, at least as institutional policies adopted, of the EU, and the extremely fragmented cluster of the MENA states, apparently hardly capable of articulating a common position, let alone a joint inter-governmental organization; that of dependence-aggravating economic asymmetry and (perceptual risk of) neocolonialism. The idea of the fragmentary, heterogeneous character of MENA is not at all contrary to the above-described argument – weakness of geopolitical incoherence; it merely means that within the indisputably coherent MENA-RSC, the key enmity relations within the social construction of the complex are too intense and/or durable to allow generating a really efficient common institutional expression. Starting from this state of affairs, in the absence of a common institutional expression at the level of MENA, logically derives why the states of this area cannot enter a fruitful "interregional dialogue" with the EU; " a relatively homogeneous group of EU members faces the relatively heterogeneous group of MTC" (Brocza, 2012). In the same sense, the analogies made sometimes with OSCE should be rejected, presumably a successful concept, not only because "the idea of using a successful concept a second time is evidence of political will (Elbers and Fiebich-Dinkel, 2011, pp. 197-220), but also because, at a closer analysis, the OSCED internal geopolitical rivalries (I mean here Russia vs. Some key-Western states), themselves similar somehow to the MENA-RSC ones, explains why OSCE actually does not represent a successful model either .

At a second level, in an admittedly debated reasoning in its normative ambivalence, a weakness would consist in the huge role of EU as a commercial partner of the Arab member states of EUROMED: the massive implication of EU in the trade of the respective states sets, indeed, the premises of their modernization, of their economic development, but at the same time it is a source of insecurity from the point of view of the developed extreme asymmetric dependence. Overwhelmingly directed toward the former colonial state, this dependence is reflected for instance by the figures in the tables No. 4 and 5 above. In the light of the first of the two, France as a former colonizing state, captured 30.3% of Algeria’s imports; 33.6% (over 1/2 together with Spain) of Morocco’s exports and 33.1% (58.4% together with Italy) of exports and 1/4 of Tunisia’s imports, just like Italy represents the destination of 37% of the exports and respectively the source of 1/4 of the imports of its former colony, Lybia. In this light, discussing about the major risks of security for the Maghreb states corresponding to the possibility of the deterioration of the relation with the former colonizing state is probably superfluos. Illustrative for the moment of turning a decade from launching EUROMED, the underlying table illustrates the remarkable influence maintained by the former colonial/managing states, even over half a century away from the historical wave of decolonization, on the economic relations of the state former colony or territory under guardianship. Extreme asymmetries as found between on the one hand, the former colonial powers, France and Italy, and on the other hand, TMC Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, in configurations conferring substance to some accusations, not very sound, it’s true, of neo- or crypto-colonialism:

Red: former colonial power; * League of Nation’s mandate, administered by ~

Main commercial partners of ten TMC, with the highlighting of the former colonial power, 2004

Sources: CIA World Factbook 2005 achive; EU 2005; UfM and MEDEA websites

Moreover, a diachronic analysis between 2002-2012, which covers partially both for the former EUROMED period, and for the current UfM period, illustrates an aggravation of a trade balance in most of the TMC cases, with easily explainable exceptions (i.e. the massive export of energy resources) of Libya and Algeria, the increasing deficit for the analyzed period from 3.7 billion USD in the case of Syria to no less than 22.2 in the case of Egypt:

The dynamics of TMCs' trade balance in relation to the EU countries, 2002-2012

Source: Eurostat, 2012

In its logical implication, the type of transregional relationship between EU and TMC seems a beneficial one rather for the former than the latter, increasing the economic dependency of MENA in relation with EU, which subsequently, and at least in relative terms, contradicts the very goal of the partnership, the one of facilitating prosperity and economic development in the targeted area.

The latest data at hand at the time of editing this paper, provided by IMF's Direction of Trade Statistics, capture an unchanged picture in its essence, with the commercial deficits attaining most of the times alarming rates as compared with the absolute volume of trade exchange – for instance a -8.4 bil. USD deficit for Egypt compared to a total exports value of 8 bil., -3.4 bil. for Jordan, compared to total imports amounting to 3.7 bil., or -0.6 for Syria, whose total imports reach 0.7 bil.

Trade balance of some TMC in relation to the European Union, 2014 (bil. USD)

Source: IMF

Trying to shed additional explanatory light, unfortunately the dynamic and comparative pursuit of UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI), as in the table below, provides no conclusive results. Thus, at first sight, the figures would indicate, contrary to the above reasoning, an advantage at least in terms – taking over from the specialized jargon of the Theory of International Relations – of relative gains, sometimes even absolute gains, of MENA states in relation with EU states.

Comparative evolution of HDI in few MENA and EU states in the 2002-2013 period

adapted apud UNDP 2004 and 2014, pp.172-175

Such a conclusion would be rather misleading. At a closer look, even by abstraction of the disruption caused to evolution and consecutively of the accuracy of the conclusions of the financial crisis arisen in autumn 2008 (which has naturally affected to a significantly higher degree the EU member states as more intensely globalized countries), it is worth mentioning that the internal evolutions of MENA area are not unitary, but divergent (e.g. HDI increases in Egypt or Mauritania, but also decreases in Syria or the Palestinian territories) and at the same time that the very absolute rates of variation remain practically insignificant – the maximum positive of +0.029 in Egypt, and the negative of -0.052 in Syria. As a corrolary, the relative appreciations of the ranks or, on the contrary, the depreciations occured rather indirectly, at the expense of other states in the overall standings of UNDP.

In conclusion of this second weakness and making the connection with the next one, the European approach is considered as denouncing the limits of the functionalist model, in the sense that the local MTC ownership translated as interested participation "is too weak or largely absent […] What remains is largely asymmetric bilateral relations" (Elbers and Fiebich-Dinkel, 2011, pp. 205).

Finally, the third major weakness that I analytically assign to the European perspective consists in the very absence of capabilities required to the EU to: rival its global competitors; substantiate or complete from the military point of view its approach to security traditionally "soft"; internally integrate the diversity propagated by the vector migration from MENA direction. In substance, it has been argued, there is a significant gap between EU's capabilities and its expectations (Hill, 1998) and that, subsequently, the EU needs to define its Mediterranean interests and objectives more realistically (Brocza, 2012).

This lack of necessary capabilities was acutely denounced, and eloquently, only a few months away from the establishment of UfM, with the outbreak of the global economic anf financial crisis whose effects are felt in the present. As a result, it was especially the PIGSC countries, a key-state in the structural-procedural arrangement of UfM, which felt more acutely the effects of the crisis, haggling for subsidies and loans "from an increasingly fed-up Northern Europe" (V.D. Hansen, 2013) and which contributed to the unmistakable perception "that not only the southern shore of the Mediterranean was unstable, but also the 'north', at least economically" (Censini, 2012). This may in part explain why, being still torn by the crisis' effects, during the Arab Spring of 2011, the EU member states overwhelmingly showed more interest in solving their own domestic economic, financial and political problems rather than trying to assist in any way, other than purely declaratively, the socio-political changes in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, or Libya (Censini, 2012).

Moreover, even aside from the global crisis, the evolutions of the last 15-20 years demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that EU simply does not have the necessary resources to compete authentically at the global level, respectively as regional influence in the MENA area, with USA, China or Russia. The graph below shows that the concrete influence of EU interpreted here as its share within the MEDA countries' foreign trade has decreased continuously since 2002, and not only after the crisis triggered in 2012:

EU’s aggregated [import + export] share of MENA countries’ foreign trade (%)

Source: Eurostat 2003, 2008, 2012

This almost generalized decrease, with the sole exception of post-Qaddafi Libya, occured indirectly, or relatively (and not in absolute values of the volumes of commercial exchange), on account of the increase of the undertaken share of foreign trade of the region by US and China in particular – probably the two genuinely global players which would have remained in the future international system on medium term of – I could roughly estimate – twenty-thirty years (see in particular China in the exports to Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and within the imports of Morocco, Syria, and Mauritania, compared to – say – Italy's position within the exports of its traditional client state Libya):

Main export partners of 9 non-EU UfM member states by % of national total, 2002 (yellow) vs. 2012 (blue)

Source: CIA World Factbook 2003, 2012

Main import partners of 9 non-EU UfM member states by % of national total, 2002 (yellow) vs. 2012 (blue)

Source: CIA World Factbook 2003, 2012

Furthermore, even beyond the loss of the leading position in the MEDA states trade in favor either of some great powers such as China and US, or of some states in the larger MENA area, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Libya, the Mediterranean regional actually ranks extremely low on EU's hierarchy of comercial relations worldwide, which might mean that not only the Union is incapable to rival with the competitors, but also, possibly, the region in discussion simply fails to represent a commercial priority:

ACP = Asia, Caribbean, Pacific (79 countries);

ANCOM = Andean Community (4: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru);

ASEAN = Association of South East Asia Nations (10: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam);

BRIC = 4: Brazil, Russia, India, China;

CACM = Central American Common Market (6: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama);

Candidate countries = 6: Croatia, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey;

CIS = Commonwealth of Independent States (11: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan);

EFTA: European Free Trade Association (4: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland);

Latin America = 17: CACM + Mercosur + ANCOM + Chile, Mexico, Venezuela;

MEDA = Mediterranean region (14: Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Montenegro, Morocco, occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, Tunisia)

Mercosur = 4 (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay);

NAFTA = North American Free Trade Agreement (3: USA, Canada, Mexico);

EU’s main trade partners by region, value, share of EU trade, and region country average

Source: Eurostat, 2013

Finally, as a third aspect of the same weakness, it has been argued, usually from positions of leftist ideological orientation, that the EU would be affected also by an internal weakness, it’s true, unquantifiable, but not less meaningful, deep, difuse, and which probably became much more visible after 11 September 2001 and then the Islamist terrorist attacks these last years on European territory, possibly culminating, at least imagologically, with that of January 2015 on the Paris satirical weekly editorial board Charlie Hebdo, and was formulated among others, by Alberto Vasconcelos (2002, pp. 119): the European Union promotor of the “Barcelona process” and of “neighbourhood policy” (see the European Neighbourhood Strategy Policy Paper of May 2004), and which insistently calms down at the official level the valorisation of diversity under all its possible aspects, seems, at least for now, incapable of integrating the extreme cultural diversity of its geographically proximate area, concretely, to integrate the Moslim immigrants and citizens. Much, maybe too much, has been written on this topic, and frequently too, in an unmistakably interpretive note of, in Huntington's terms, a "clash of civilizations". Various papers, both academic and in media, have for instance addressed an alleged "Islamophobia" that would characterize Europe in particular and "the West" more generally (see for instance Hafez, 2010, or Sheehi, 2011); the literature addresing populism, including in its religious dimension, has also grown exponentially over the past years (e.g. Bornschier, 2010), with a branch within it specifically addresing the so-called "islamophobic populism" and its alleged "mainstreaming" on the political spectrum (Kallis, 2013), with mass media accordingly paying great attention to the parties of the extreme right, populist and xenophobic in Europe, from the National front in France to the British UKIP or from the Dutch Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders to the Flemish Interest in neighbouring Belgium. Given this impressive growing volume of literature, I will not insist on this matter, but just summarizing that, in the absence of the capacity and/or political and social wish of integration of the Moslim profile diversity, and all the more serious in the recent context of what various political and journalistic circles describe as a true "Islamophobia", a genuine Euro-Mediterranean partnership cannot be developed based on the principles of open citizenship and of the harmony of various cultures and civilizations founded on the rule of law. Thus, European "anxiety over terrorism and illegal immigration undermined social, human and cultural dialogue" (Ortega, 2003, pp.5), within an apparently on-going transition, as logic and general perception, from the paradigm of unity in diversity to the clash of civilizations.

3.3. Partial conclusions

All that being justified, in the wider context of setting within the thesis MENA-RSC as a minisystem where all major IR theories can be applied (e.g. balance of power, polarity, interdependence, alliance systems) and of the European Mediterranean perspective as rather "on the horizontal" than rigorously "top-down", and repeating that the late EUROMED was an undeniably huge failure (labeled by analysts as "failure", "fiasco", or "big disappointment"), in relation with it, the 2008-established UfM, reluctantly accepted by other major EU member states, has brought in a few improvements in comparison, such as the establishment of a permanent Secretariat as a coordinating body, an equal North-South representation in all UfM institutions (e.g. the co-presidency), and a higher Summit frequency (biennial instead of once every five years, as previous).

However, UfM as the main institutional expression of the European approach of MENA fully took over all the "flaws" of the former partnership, which exceed all the potential strengths that might be assigned to it. Among these structural weaknesses, I would suggest to retain the extremely synthetical one: an artificial and unsustainable cross-cutting of the Middle East security complex, in a full and damaging ignorance of objective local reality backed by internal incoherence of EU aggravated by UfM’s confusing overlapping with various other trans-regional initiatives approaching the same MENA area. Also on the weaknesses side, the de facto asymmetry within the transregional relation in terms of power balance and economic relations reflects the quasi exclusive concern of EU for its own security (from the prevention or reduction of immigration in MENA to providing the import of energy resources), in a cynical contradiction to the nobility and altruism of the declared objectives of the "partnership" and of the unbridged gap between capabilities and expectations, both absolutely and relatively to other global players of increasing involvement in the MENA area.

EU seems to have lost the battle for regional influence in favor of the US and China, but, no less true, except for some particular cases of unilateralism such as – in particular – the French one, MENA does not seem to represent a priority on the security agenda of the EU.

Thus, in terms of strengths and weaknesses, although bearing an advantageous axiological neutrality (unlike some equivalent US initiatives), fostering some considerable economic benefits for the Arab member states, and arguendo, succeeding in seating Israel and some hostile states in the region at the same negotiation table, EU’s still remains fundamentally flawed in that it, for instance: tries to apply an artificial, arbitrary, and subsequently unsustainable, internal separation (Mashriq vs. Maghreb vs. Persian Gulf) within the wider security complex of the Middle East – North Africa contiguum (unlike, from this angle of view, G8’s more promising “Broader Middle East and North Africa” initiative). While overall and at first glance fostering economic growth, it also deepens the traditional asymmetrical economic relationships between the local state and its former colonial power. Still tributary to the very format of its encompassing European Neighbourhood Policy framework, it encounters visible difficulties in successfully integrating the extreme cultural diversity at its proximity.

As for the various proposals of improving such structural-procedural defficiencies, such a problem does not make the object of study of this thesis, which is not a policy paper meant to identify solutions and formulate recommendations, but an academic paper meant to provide understanding an explanation.

Only with a parenthetical title, I limited myself to review a few such proposal made by such analysts as, for instance, Stefan Brocza in his article suggestively called "The failure of the EU’s Mediterranean policies" (2012):

– the substantiation of the concept of “differentiated bilateralism” while massively supporting regional integration efforts of the Mediterranean third party countries;

– the provision of enhanced political incentives for transformation processes (such as options for a “privileged association”);

– a necessary clarification of EU’s territorial enlargement processes scope, including in the UfM-ENP relation;

– a decision on a possible EU accession of Turkey;

– a  solution of the Cyprus issue and the Western Sahara conflict;  

– and finally, finding a viable solution for the Middle East conflict, possibly beginning, in Brocza's opinion, with the full political recognition of a Palestinian state, a proposal considered risky on short term, but beneficial on the long term.