The European Union, security and the southern dimension

Abstract

With the coming into force of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Union (EU) annunciated what one could term an ‘inclusionist approach’ to security whereby this policy framework was based on supposedly joint commitments by all parties concerned to ‘cooperative security’. However, EU actions on the ground in the south have shown that, despite good intentions, such cooperative security endeavours have, thus far, hardly materialised. The result instead is an ‘exclusionist’ policy, where the reduction of illegal migration from the south takes top priority in EU security discourse. Post-9/11, in the policy area of ‘counter-terrorism’ measures, the EU likewise demarcates ‘liberal zones of civilisation’ from ‘illiberal’ ones, leaving the dirty work of counter terrorism to countries such as Egypt and Morocco. In terms of governmentality, this may be described as a ‘surveillance and control’ approach to security: therefore, it is argued here that the EU, through its governance model, is actually enabling further in-security and in-stability in the south.