EUROPE'S WORLD DEBATING FORUM
In reaction to Richard Youngs' "How Europe's Mediterranean policy went so badly wrong"
Autumn 2006
A crisis like the one that we have been seeing these last days in Lebanon might definitely make us lose our faith not only in the Barcelona process, but in most of inter-governmental and regional processes that surround the Mediterranean region. In this sense it is completely logical to feel deception when it comes to the evaluation of ten years of the Barcelona process, and think about a failure of European policy in the Mediterranean.
But this assessment would only represent a part of the picture: if we consider the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) as a failure we must consider disappointing the foreign policy of the EU and maybe even the whole EU as a process under construction. As Richard exposes in the case of the Middle East, the EU seems to be squeezed out of the strategic picture. But in such a complex scenario, the question whether the Barcelona process is able to provide solutions or not and whether it is a failure, leads us to an impasse because it implies to question core values, a whole philosophy that has allowed Europe to grow in the past years.
The Barcelona process was conceived as a tool to help to confront new challenges once the peace process in the Middle East would have reached to an end, which has not been the case. Moreover, in terms of action, the same can not be asked to EMP than to other processes, at intergovernmental level, that incorporate binding mechanisms. The EMP represents the construction of a new common language to confront challenges to the Mediterranean in the following years and is based on politic will and a wide consensus on the necessity of establishing a different approach, a regional approach to major problems in the area. As it has been said in several occasions, the process is moving and has readapt its orientations according to new situations. Again, Eppur si muove.
I agree with the fact that the EU has not yet found the way to convince Arab partners of the authenticity of its convictions, although the first problem might be the crisis of the EU as a unique voice. On the other hand, in the side of the Arab partners, the lack of unity is evident when confronted to give a unique position in regional conflicts. Moreover, there are no ties among different regional initiatives that involve different countries in the region as the Arab League for example.
Since this is the panorama, the only way to approach an accurate balance of the EMP outcomes implies the measurement of its (little) victories. And one of the victories include the capacity of the EMP to gather actors (from the so-called civil society) in new projects that require consensus and negotiation as a new way to manage the complex societies in which we live, not only in the north, but also in the south of the Mediterranean. Young’s statement concerning the way current initiatives of Europe towards the Mediterranean are implemented is a good starting point. He argues, reasonably, that the civil society is “chosen directly by governments”. This is true again, but the results of networking, as for the Anna Lindh Foundation case, can not be measured only in terms of capacity of incorporating definitive free and independent civil society, as in an interlinked world we find little independent action and we don’t fight anymore in a context where things are black or white. On the other hand, the rules of the game are established by both parts, on the basis of a European engagement to support democracy and on a temporary trend to modernisation in the south countries.
In this context, it is true, two are the major challenges for Barcelona process in the following years: involving different organisations and political movements, including Islamists, in the process, and use the European Neighbourhood Policy as a new tool able to make some partners go further, but by using the already existing acquis of the Barcelona process. These would be new ways to approach the complex situation confronted now by the Mediterranean region, where lessons from the last ten years must be taken into account in an always difficult search of equilibrium.