Dimitris Bouris

The European Union's role in the Palestinian Territories: state-building through Security Sector Reform?

Abstract The aim of this article is to shed light on the distinctive role of the EU in Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) and examine how SSR has contributed to the overall state-building project. Following the Oslo Accords, the EU engaged actively in the state-building project in the OPTs taking a number of initiatives on the ground. Since then security has been a key issue in all Israeli–Palestinian agreements and has also became synonymous with Palestinian statehood. The article draws upon literature on state-building and SSR and its central aim is to examine the distinctive initiatives that the EU has taken in order to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) reform both its security and judiciary sector as part of its broader state-building strategy towards the OPTs, as well as provide explanations on why these policies had limited impact.

Introducing the Rule of Law in Security Sector Reform: European Union Policies in the Palestinian Territories

This paper examines the efforts of the European Union to advance Security Sector Reform and to bridge the gap with the Judiciary Sector Reform and the rule of law in the Occupies Palestinian Territories. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the EU engaged actively in the state-building project in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by taking a number of initiatives in situ. Security has been a key issue in all Israeli-Palestinian agreements concluded during the post-1993 Oslo interim period up to 1999 and then, with the resumption of the Palestinian intifada in 2000, security became primordial to all internationally-sponsored diplomatic initiatives and peace plans. The article analyses the EU initiatives undertaken to help the Palestinian Authority reform its security and judiciary sectors, and argues that while the European Union has, in theory, supported the rule of law perspective in Palestinian Security Sector Reform, in reality it has not paid much attention to improving democratic civilian oversight and accountability.

The Vicious Cycle of Building and Destroying: the 2014 War on Gaza

The 2014 summer war on Gaza was the third in the last six years and in many ways the most devastating one. While the triggers to this war were the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent kidnapping and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager, the real reasons can be traced back to the international communitys failed and myopic policies towards Gaza. Moreover, by adopting the ‘West Bank first’ strategy the international community has failed to blow some fresh air into what is left of the so-called Middle East Peace Process and has acted as the abettor of the recent war.

The 2011 Revised European Neighbourhood Policy : Continuity and Change in EU Foreign Policy

The EU’s relations with its eastern and southern neighbours have never attracted as much attention as in recent years. The outbreak of what was prematurely called the ‘Arab Spring’ in early 2011, the fall of supposedly consolidated autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the eruption and continuation of the civil war in Syria, the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh), the military coup of 3 July 2013 in Egypt leading to the ousting of the first ever democratically elected civilian Egyptian president, the Euromaidan revolution of 2013/2014 and the subsequent Russian annexation of the Crimea, followed by the emergence of territorial conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian military and paramilitary forces in eastern parts of Ukraine, growing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the deterioration of democratic standards and practices in Georgia, Moldova’s backsliding to corrupt and unresponsive (oligarchic) rule, unprecedented waves of human displacement—these are just some of the many dramatic developments in the EU’s neighbourhood that have recently emerged on the agenda of EU foreign-policy makers. In conjunction with the remnants of the financial and economic crisis, affecting both EU member states and European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) partner countries in the EU’s neighbourhood, and the persistence and re-emergence of ‘stubborn authoritarianism’, these developments have exposed the EU’s ENP to challenges unthinkable when it was originally launched in 2003. In parallel, EU membership of central and eastern European countries in 2004 and 2007, Croatia’s accession to the EU in 2013, the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty and thus the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), have altered the EU and EU foreign policy making towards the neighbourhood from within.

Europeanisation, Sovereignty and Contested States: The EU in northern Cyprus and Palestine:

Combining the literature on sovereignty and Europeanisation, this article investigates the engagement and impact of the European Union (EU) on contested states (states lacking recognition) through a comparative study of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Palestine. We find that characteristics of contested statehood mediate EU engagement and impact: the lack of international recognition limits EU’s engagement but encourages development promotion, international integration and assistance of local civil society. Lack of territorial control limits engagement, but ineffective government offers opportunities for development promotion and state-building. As such, and in addition to offering a rich empirical account of two prominent contested states, the article contributes to the discussion of international engagement by developing an innovative conceptual framework for understanding EU’s impact on contested states—a topic neglected within a literature dominated by conventional statehood or conflict resolution themes but very important given extensive international engagement in contested states—and related conflicts.

Of Policy Entrepreneurship, bandwagoning and free-riding : EU member states and multilateral cooperation frameworks for Europe's southern neighbourhood

Over the past 25 years the EU and NATO have displayed considerable agency and thus influence as far as the development of institutionalised collective cooperation and/or foreign policy frameworks towards Europe’s southern neighbourhood is concerned. Against this backdrop, this article puts EU and NATO member states’ foreign policies towards their southern neighbourhood at its centre. After mapping their southern neighbourhood-related interests, it discusses how they have been pursuing these interests – to the extent that they exist – within and beyond the EU and NATO and examines whether this pursuit has resulted in concrete foreign policy action. The article focuses on the EU Big-5, i.e. France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany, as well as Portugal, usually considered a “small state”. This choice allows for both a most deviant and a most similar case comparison and contrasts policy entrepreneurship (France, Spain, Italy) vis-à-vis Europe’s southern neighbourhood with bandwagoning and free-riding tendencies (Portugal) and a mix of opportunity-maximising and/or fence-sitting practices (United Kingdom and Germany).