Benedetta Voltolini

EU Democracy Assistance in the Mediterranean: What Relationship with the Arab Uprisings?

This article analyzes the European Union (EU) policy for democracy assistance toward the Southern Mediterranean countries and tracks changes in the last decade, with a special emphasis on the most recent period. It shows that the EU policy, which goes under the acronym of EIDHR, has evolved, but predominantly in response to internal dynamics rather than to developments in Arab countries. The EU has increasingly provided assistance to local actors on the ground in non-member countries and has differentiated its action in authoritarian countries from countries in transition. When it comes to implementing its own policy, however, the EU is less able to promote democracy than human rights, and most of the funds go to support projects centered on relatively uncontroversial rights such as womens and childrens.

Non-state actors and framing processes in EU foreign policy: the case of EU–Israel relations

ABSTRACT This article investigates the role of non-state actors (NSAs) in European Union (EU) foreign policy, focusing on how they contribute to the emergence and codification of new frames that underpin EU external policies. It argues that changes in EU foreign policy are the result of interactions among a frame entrepreneur, often played by an NSA, and policy-makers in situations of cognitive uncertainty and when a policy window opens. The empirical evidence is based on the case of EU–Israel relations: a non-governmental orgaization (NGO) called MATTIN Group acted as frame entrepreneur and contributed to the emergence and codification of a new frame of understanding of EU–Israel relations, redefining them on the basis of a legal paradigm. This clarifies the territorial scope of bilateral agreements and ensures that the bilateral relations are constructed and implemented in accordance with EU legal framework and its commitments under international law.

Framing and reframing the EU’s engagement with the Mediterranean: Examining the security-stability nexus before and after the Arab uprisings

Abstract EU policies towards the Southern Mediterranean after the Arab uprisings are predominantly seen in the literature as marked by continuity with the past. This is attributed to the fact that the EU still acts with the aim of maximising its security by preserving stability in the region. By examining a range of policy areas, this special issue aims to assess and qualify this claim. Its introduction outlines our case on both empirical and analytical grounds. Empirically, it is argued that we need to offer a more detailed analysis of each specific policy area to assess the extent of continuity and change. Analytically, this introduction proposes a framework that focuses on processes of frame definition and frame enactment to explain change and continuity in the EU’s approach. More specifically, security, stability and the link between them – the security–stability nexus – are considered as the master frame shaping the EU’s approach towards the Southern Mediterranean. This is enacted along two dimensions: the modalities of EU engagement with Southern Mediterranean partners; and the range of actors engaged.

The EU and Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab uprisings: A story of selective engagement

Abstract This article argues that the new EU’s selective engagement with Islamist parties in its Southern neighbourhood following the Arab uprisings is the result of a partial shift in the EU’s frame used to understand political Islam, combined with a form of pragmatism that puts a premium on finding interlocutors in the region. Using the case studies of Tunisia and Egypt, it shows that the EU has replaced its previous monolithic conception of political Islam with an understanding that is more sensitive to differences among Islamists. This opens the door to some forms of engagement with those actors that renounce violence and demonstrate their commitment to work within the confines of democratic rules, while violent strands of political Islam and conservative groups remain at arm’s length.

Europe, the Green Line and the Issue of the Israeli-Palestinian Border: Closing the Gap between Discourse and Practice?

ABSTRACT The article analyses how the Europeans (meaning European states and the EC/EU) have progressively turned a discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian border into a foreign policy practice. While much of the literature highlights the existence of a ‘gap between discourse and practice’ when it comes to Europeans’ foreign policy stance towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, we argue that the gap is dynamic and has changed across time. In the absence of an internationally and locally recognised border between Israel and Palestine, the Europeans have aimed at constructing one on the 1949 armistice line, the so-called Green Line. They have done so in stages, by first formulating a discursive practice about the need for a border, then establishing economic practices in the late 1980s-early 1990s, and most recently practicing a legal frame of reference for relations with Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) based on the Green Line. The outcome is that, for what concerns European countries and EU legislation, the Green Line has been increasingly taken as the Israeli-Palestinian border. However, gaps never fully close and more contemporary events seem in fact to point to a re-opening of the gap, as the article explores.

When Security Trumps Democracy: Israel and Palestine

As part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East region, Israel and Palestine1 are among the countries targeted by European Union (EU) policies aimed at democracy promotion. As democracy and human rights are universal values, it is to be expected that every actor in the world should uphold the standards they set, including inside the EU. The local context of Israel and Palestine, however, is particularly ridden with contradictions and plagued by one of the most intractable conflicts in the world, thus raising a set of considerations that, when taken together, present actors promoting democracy with stark choices. As a consequence, the EU has routinely addressed external conditions for democracy more than democracy itself, embracing a shallow liberal democracy promotion agenda due to the local situation of conflict and the related security concerns.

Security and Stability Reframed, Selective Engagement Maintained? The EU in the Mediterranean after the Arab Uprisings

Abstract This conclusion provides a comparative survey of the main findings of this special issue and suggests avenues for further research. It shows that the security–stability nexus through which the EU approaches the Southern Mediterranean has experienced some measure of reframing in the wake of the Arab uprisings. While leading the EU towards a more inclusive approach, this partial frame redefinition has on the whole translated into forms of highly selective engagement. This conclusion suggests that this mismatch between the change in frame definition and its enactment in different policy areas can be accounted for with reference to four factors: institutional sources of policy rigidity, time lag, issue politicization and the willingness of Mediterranean partners to engage with the EU.

Territorial Borders and Functional Regimes in EU-Israeli Agreements

In the framework chapter of this volume, Del Sarto (2015) argues that Israel and Palestine may be conceptualised as the EU’s borderlands (i.e. hybrid spaces in which different types of borders coexist and partially overlap). When borderlands are created, territorial and functional borders blur and/or overlap, thus creating forms of variable geometry, which are determined by the policy under consideration. However, the situation becomes more complicated when the EU signs agreements with countries that have disputed/occupied1 territories, such as in the case of Israel-Palestine. In these cases, territorial borders lie at the heart of the problem. Against this backdrop, this chapter asks about the implications when the EU’s practice of exporting its rules to the neighbourhood, extending its legal frameworks to these countries without incorporating them into its territory, is confronted with disputed/contested territorial borders. How does the different interpretation of the territorial scope of agreements affect EU policies, as well as its bilateral relations with both Israel and the Palestinians?

The European Neighbourhood Policy in Perspective: Context, Implementation and Impact

campaigns aimed at ‘punishing Muslim communities’ (p. 255) exploit media as a campaign tool. In such cases whole campaigns, not only their media component, should be evaluated against national and international human rights guarantees. It was brave of the editor and contributors, some of whom clearly struggled to write in English, to make this work available in a language that can reach a wide audience. However, by neglecting to edit for language or to check the references, the publisher left the book in a semi-finished state. We can guess the meaning of ‘dinamization’ (p. 19), ‘dynamise’ (p. 187), ‘maddle’ (p. 60), ‘chocking’ (p. 61) and so on. But it is harder to grasp a sentence that reads ‘I am not particularly against this measure, but could as well penalize migrants, given that the Blue Card aims at reinforce the idea of circular migration’ (p. 242). As for following up the numerous sources mentioned in the text but omitted from the bibliography, this is a task for dedicated researchers in the field.

The Middle East and the Mediterranean: The ‘Russian Doll’ Policy of the European Union

The Middle East and North African countries are at the fringes of the European Union. Economic and political interests and stakes in the region are thus particularly high. Therefore, the EU has always tried to keep good relationships with these countries and to develop a strategy to deal with the region. Besides bilateral relations between EU member states and Mediterranean countries or their involvement in the Middle East Peace Process, the EU showed its interest in the area as long ago as the 1970s. The increasing importance of the Mediterranean and the Middle East has led to the creation of the Barcelona Process/Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), launched in 1995, and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), established in 2008. These multilateral frameworks now represent the context within which EU relations with those countries develop. Although they are aimed at promoting bilateral and multilateral co-operation, success has been minimal for several reasons, one of them being the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Indeed, tensions between Israel and Arab states and the ongoing violence in the area have hampered the take-off of an