The Unintended Consequences of the EU’s Rural Development Programme in the Arab Countryside

ABSTRACT

After the Arab revolts, the EU designed a new regional rural development programme to address the various political and economic threats in the Arab Mediterranean countryside. Although the programme is based on a new cognitive framework, it has generated unintended consequences that undermine its effectiveness. These consequences were predictable. They are a product of path dependency and the inability of policymakers to draw lessons from previous EU initiatives with similar aims and to contextualise the relationship between small farmers and political elites in the Arab countryside.

KEYWORDS:

• ENP
• ENPARD
• rural development
• North Africa
• unintended consequences

Interviews

European Commission official, Interview 14 October 2014, Brussels.

European Commission Official, Interview 14 October 2014, Brussels.

Lebanese state official, Interview 15 October 2014, Brussels.

Notes

¹ LEADER is an EU initiative that was launched in 1991. It engages local actors in the design and delivery of strategies, decision-making and resource allocation for the development of their rural areas.

² In the article, ENPARD is used to describe the work of the program in the Southern rim of the ENP.

³ The Southern ENP partners that participate in ENPARD are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia.

⁴ Unstructured interviews were held during the author’s participation in a seminar in Brussels in October 2014 on communication of ENPARD’s objectives and rationale with stakeholders from both the EU and partners from the Arab Mediterranean countries. The three interviewees (two civil servants from the European Commission and a senior civil servant from a pilot area in one of the ENP countries) prefer to keep their anonymity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christos Kourtelis

Christos Kourtelis is Lecturer in European and International Politics at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.