ABSTRACT
In this chapter, interfaces between the EU and the countries in the eastern and southern Mediterranean are analysed. All in all, ten countries are in focus here, initially divided into two groups of cultural and political significance – the Maghreb and the Levant. The Maghreb countries are Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, whereas the Levant countries are Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and Syria. Egypt traditionally has occupied an ambiguous position between these two groups, but is here considered part of the Levant – Egypt has at times in history belonged to the Levant and is currently intrinsically involved in Middle East politics. In parallel to the previous chapter, these geographical groupings carry no a priori weight for the issue of interface character, but serve as practical tools for analysis. They, moreover, correspond to the subcomplex groups that Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver use in their analysis. As we will see, however, the groups are not internally consistent regarding EU interfaces; instead, there is great variation within each group in this respect. A couple of general points need to be addressed at this early point of the chapter. First, we need to keep in mind that we are focusing here on countries – with the exception of Israel – that are not liberal democracies (if judging, for instance, by the Freedom House (2008) democracy ratings, where Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon are viewed ‘partly free’ and the rest of the countries ‘not free’). Moreover, these countries display weak human as well as economic development, as pointed out, for instance, by the Arab Human Development Report of the United Nations Developments Programme (UNDP 2005). These fundamentals create challenges for, and to a large extent determine, the agenda for EU interaction. Importantly, ENP Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner referred to the Arab Human Development Report when describing the general picture of the situation in the Arab countries in terms of three deficits – a freedom deficit, a knowledge deficit, a gender deficit (Ferrero-Waldner 2006g). Poor governance structures also imply that while contractual relations between the EU and many of these countries are quite long-standing they may be limited in scope and only partly implemented. In comparison, then, the political conditions are not the same as in the post-Soviet cases – the Mediterranean cases are not cases of transition, but rather cases of (under-) development in the traditional sense.
