EU Counterterrorism and the Southern Mediterranean Countries after the Arab Spring: New Potential for Cooperation?

The quest for a security strategy is one of the most urgent and fundamental issues facing the European Union (EU) and its neighborhood today. The European Security Strategy (ESS), adopted in 2003, identified a number of key threats (terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts, state failure, and organized crime) facing the EU today. It emphasized the impact of the EU’s neighborhood on EU security, arguing that “[neighbours] who are engaged in violent conflict, weak states where organised crime flourishes, dysfunctional societies or exploding population growth on its borders all pose problems for Europe.” ¹ More recently, the 2008 report on the implementation of the ESS emphasized that these threats and challenges “[had] not gone away,” but instead had become more complex, ² thus underlining the importance of developing a “greater engagement with [the EU’s] neighbourhood.” ³ In the context of the recent Arab revolutions, this need for engagement with the Southern Mediterranean countries has increased even further.