Abstract
The Mediterranean region, stretching over 2.5 million square kilometers, and consisting of parts of southern Europe, the Balkan region, North Africa (Maghreb) and West Asia, is considered to be the cradle of the European civilization. The importance of the Mediterranean region to the European Union (EU) has been succinctly captured by the European Commission itself. In fact, the Mediterranean Basin is important to the EU for a whole range of reasons, relating not only to geographical proximity but also to mutual interests and colonial links. Thus, the Mediterranean is perceived as a politically and strategically important area in the community’s own backyard where the aim of Europe is the creation of a sphere of influence.
Karim Knio in his book uses a new institutionalist perspective to shed light on the failure of the EU activities in the Mediterranean. In the past, these failures have largely been understood as being the result of problems that are primarily cosmetic in nature along with structural incentives or enforcement mechanisms in the region. Other reasons also include the negligence of historical structures and legacies on the part of the EU that leave a lasting impact. Knio in his new approach suggests that the cause of such failures rather lie at the very foundations on which the entire edifice of EU-Mediterranean policy is built and continues to be built, and these failures are the result of problems at the very heart of EU policymaking which clearly privilege economic concerns over social concerns.
The author argues that most of the bargaining power rests with the EU, which has been accused of being aggressive and ungenerous in its external relations, particularly with regard to trade policy. Furthermore, the EU has a tendency to negotiate agreements which largely reflect its own priorities and give limited attention to the requirements of the other country or countries involved. This trend, therefore, implies that there is a need for new ways of describing how authority, rights, obligations, interactions, experiences and resources are organized, beyond mere hierarchies and markets (p. 11).
The European Commission affirms that in the long run, a peaceful, stable and prosperous Europe is unthinkable without an equally peaceful, stable and prosperous Mediterranean region. In this regard, there is a long trajectory of political, economic and societal interactions that have manifested within the diverse European–Mediterranean regional space. The author argues that in the last few decades, the European Community (EC) has been continuously trying, at least rhetorically, to revive its fading post-colonial political relations with its Mediterranean counterparts. For instance, from an economic perspective, European Commission’s interests in the region alternated between the need to secure vital energy supplies such as oil and natural gas and the drive to promote trade networks with large, nascent, profitable markets. In recent years, the exacerbation of social problems, such as mass illegal immigration, anchored the European Commission’s developmental role in the region and motivated a revision of the content and style of its Mediterranean policies. On the other hand, the EU represented a historical trade partner for Mediterranean countries absorbing between 40 and 60 per cent of their total exports (p. 39).
Knio refers to EU’s Mediterranean policy as a ‘muddle’, a metaphor which not only refers to the lack of a common vision within the EC with respect to the strategically important Mediterranean basin but also highlights the short-sighted reactive responses embedded within the EC’s economic and foreign affairs policies towards its Mediterranean neighbours. He highlights the diverse political and economic events in the 1980s that drew Europe’s focus away from the Mediterranean.
There was a constant deterioration of the economic situation in the Mediterranean which led to a social ‘spillover effect’ signaling a similar deterioration in the social sphere, especially problems of mass and illegal immigration and xenophobia. The Arab Spring in 2011 marked yet another critical point in the development trajectory of the Mediterranean region. However, EU’s preference for the economic concerns as compared to the social concerns led to the lack of vision towards the region.
Further, the partnership is also viewed as a ‘model’ as the EU was interested, for the first time, in linking the economic, political and social spheres into one coherent whole. The author also emphasizes that the EU’s economic philosophy under these new arrangements significantly differed from past practices since they explicitly adopted a market-led approach of development celebrating the ability of open free trade areas to simultaneously provide sustainable peace, economic development and prosperity. To implement these objectives, two complementary frameworks were chosen, that is, the bilateral and regional levels. At the bilateral level, the EU would continue to negotiate Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreements. At the regional level, the multilateral aspect complemented the bilateral track through general regional meetings.
The partnership progressed through the Barcelona Process and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) of which the engine was an economic and financial partnership. The Euro-Mediterranean Agreements were to be complemented by the promotion of regional economic integration, increased capital investment and infrastructural development in the framework of guidelines for the management of common resources (p. 73). Knio argues that the key to the qualitative and quantitative change intended by the policies of the EU towards the Mediterranean is to reassert the political co-ownership of the Barcelona Process and increase its visibility vis-à-vis its citizens (p. 85).
Several problems of the EU policy were because not only is the EMP economically biased but also most policies, in spite of the injection of aid and concessionary loans and the provision of safety nets, seem designed to redistribute income and wealth in favour of owners of capital to the detriment of wage earners (p. 103). The EMP further strengthens the EU’s paternalistic imposition on Mediterranean countries since the nature of the Euro-Mediterranean trade regime was—and remains—asymmetrical.
Consequently, the implementation of a free trade area and neoliberal policies in the region have produced negative social impacts such as the boost of the informal economy, an increased rural exodus and new pockets of urban poverty (p. 104). The author asserts that there needs to be more essence of political participation and institutional representation within a Euro-Mediterranean space. He suggests that if the Union is serious about its engagement in the Mediterranean region, then an alternative ‘governmentality’ needs to be in place where power considerations are not an option in policy deliberations but a must beyond normative discourse.
On the other hand, Michelle Pace provides an insight into the politics of representation and construction of identity and analyses the impact of European regionalism on the Mediterranean. She begins by describing a region in the context of the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean in a holistic fashion, in all Western institutions, is a geopolitical unit that ties the nations around its rim with common ‘concerns’ and shared ‘interests’ (p. 1). Various academic studies, especially those within the field of international relations also treat the Mediterranean as a ‘region’ due to the interdependent nature of the political, economic and social issues affecting the area as a whole.
Buzan claims that ‘In security terms, “region” means that a distinct and significant subsystem of security relations exists among a set of states whose fate is that they have been locked into geographical proximity with each other’. If foreign policy analysis is taken as a framework to study world politics, then regionalism can be taken as a level of analysis. Michelle Pace attempts to understand the Mediterranean as a region by analyzing various schools of international thought. Following works are different ways in which we tend to produce and reproduce the Mediterranean as an entity through social action.
According to the neorealist perspective towards regionalism, any regionalist arrangements among countries in the so-called semi-periphery or periphery or between these countries and developed countries will be predominantly security related. Further, it is expected that the existence of a regional hegemonic state will enhance the success of regionalist projects (p. 25). For neorealists, a region might, therefore, be seen as a subsystem of the international system that functions precisely on the basis of a division of labour and complementarity. For this strand of neorealists, a perceived commonality of interests is crucial for the establishment of a regional project.
On the other hand, neoliberal institutionalists perceive regionalism as the creation of international institutions and regimes for policy co-ordination. For neo-liberal institutionalists, the main motivations of actors involved in regionalist projects would be the procurement of public goods from interdependence.
According to neo-Marxist perspectives, the study of regional arrangements could be interpreted in the context of a general understanding of imperialism, involving the subordination of the periphery and the semi-periphery to the interests of the core, presumably industrialized countries: regions are located in the context of a capitalist world system. Neo-Marxists regionalism is expected to enhance the role of the ‘market’ and to institutionalize unequal exchange and investment relations.
Critical theory and the constructivist school wanted to demonstrate that social variation is possible: the existing order is not fixed and is not the only possible one. They also hold that social identities constitute actors’ interests and shape their actions: ‘Identities are the basis of interests’. Hence, all institutions have a structural dimension made up of constitutive principles and agents and structures are, therefore, mutually constituted.
The Mediterranean has long been viewed as an area where the EU can have an important and active role as an international actor. Michelle Pace argues that the role of the individual EU member countries in influencing EU-Mediterranean policy is a very complex issue and the conclusions reached by the authors cited seem rather conflicting. For instance, the colonial past/historical legacy of countries such as France has had a particular impact on their desire to focus more energy on developments in the southern Mediterranean (p. 86). However, Pace argues that the failure of the EU policy towards the Mediterranean region can be seen as an example of how in its various initiatives, the EU has vacillated in its conceptualization of Mediterranean ‘otherness’, exposing the limits of its representation (p. 101).
The author emphasizes more on the recent European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as it offers new opportunities for both the partners. Efforts within the ENP context should encourage the wider benefits of the democratization process to the Southern neighbours. This will in turn influence decision makers in the EU to adopt mutually motivating action plans concerning each southern country that is included in the ENP. It would further help develop networks between EU and southern neighbours and support new co-operation projects, particularly those which impact the local populations. Therefore, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all list of reform priorities, the action plans should take into account the specificities of each southern neighbour (p. 158). Michelle Pace concludes that the ENP needs to be accompanied by political conditionalities for each Southern neighbour, respectively.
Therefore, the two books in discussion question a conventional conception of the Mediterranean and try to analyze it by rethinking the region in an open and relational context. Through their approach, they explore the EU perceptions in the Mediterranean as well as EU policy in this area and discuss the failures of the partnership as well as provide their insights on the road ahead in establishing stronger, efficient and coherent relations between Europe and the Mediterranean. Overall, these books are an added value to researchers and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of Europe-Mediterranean policies and the process as well as the impact of EU policymaking.