European–Mediterranean Security and the Arab Spring: Changes and Challenges

Does the “Arab Spring” make a difference? After the uprisings in a number of Arab countries of the Mediterranean since the beginning of 2011, one might ask in how far the ongoing changes and transition processes inside the Arab countries affect the European–Mediterranean security landscape. Is the region confronted with new risks, demanding new conceptual approaches to the security problem? Does the call for democracy in the Arab countries change European approaches to the Arab region? From the beginnings of the structured dialogue, democracy and security were at the center of the European–Mediterranean relations but were also perceived as constituting a policy dilemma for European politics in the context of Arab authoritarian rule. Both concepts, democracy and security, are, on the one hand, the leitmotifs of Mediterranean politics by the West; on the other hand, they contain considerably different normative ideas and theoretical approaches, reflected in divergent strands of academic discussion on European–Mediterranean relations and the Arab countries. ¹