The EU’s Mediterranean Policy: Competing Frameworks, Actors and Dynamics from Above

Abstract

The EU is a postmodern actor in international relations. The example of the EU’s Mediterranean policy allows the analysis of the EU’s common foreign policy towards a third region, with a special attention to the competing institutional frameworks and the interaction between the above and the below, between governmental and non-governmental actors. A European Mediterranean policy officially exists since the Global Concept of 1972, replaced by the Renovated Mediterranean Policy in 1990. Only in 1995, with the launching of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), was a comprehensive regional concept for the EU’s external relations to the southern and eastern Mediterranean developed for the first time. One of the new elements of the EMP was to involve civil societies in this process of intensified EuroMediterranean intergovernmental cooperation. Complemented by the introduction of the European 2eighbourhood Policy (E2P) in 2003, the EMP underwent various crises in its implementation and was finally renamed and upgraded into the “Union for the Mediterranean” (UfM) in 2008, by means of new institutional structures. This contribution gives an overview of the existing multilateral and bilateral policy frameworks, their objectives and interrelations. We argue that, in a globalised world, non-governmental actors are gaining more influence on the formulation processes of foreign policy. But is this observation also valid for the case of the EU’s Mediterranean policy? The Mediterranean region remains a priority region for the EU for political, economic, cultural and social reasons. That is why the EU needs to invest in viable and innovative scenarios for the Euro-Mediterranean space and to keep alive Mediterranean dynamics from above.