European diplomats in the MENA region: a two-sided sense of disillusionment

ABSTRACT

The ‘Arab Spring’ posed major emotional challenges to European diplomats. Sympathies for the demonstrators’ open embrace of European norms and values merged with discomfort about incalculable consequences following the former rulers’ eventual fall. Focusing on Egypt, this contribution analyses how European diplomats reacted to Hosni Mubarak’s ouster and the following developments. With their reminiscences to Europe’s own history and the European Union’s (EU) self-perception as ‘force for good’, a two-sided sense of disillusionment grew among European representatives: about the regime’s eventual unwillingness to reform, and about their own incapacity to meaningfully support change. Based on extensive research in Cairo and Brussels, this article analyses the emotions that escorted the actions of officials from the EU and its member states in Egypt. From a multi-level perspective, it considers activities by the EU Delegation to Egypt and EU member states’ embassies in Cairo, plus initiatives coming from Brussels.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab Spring
• democratisation
• diplomacy
• emotions
• Egypt
• European Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Besides, there is an abundance of scholarship on EU-MENA relations with a vast diversity of approaches and research foci, see as but one recent example Bouris, Huber and Pace (2022). Most critical scholarship criticises the apparent difference between the EU’s propagated self-understanding as a ‘normative power’ and ‘force for good’, and its dominating self-interests in trade (Seeberg 2019, 53), security (Amadio Viceré and Fabbrini 2017, 72), democratisation (Pace 2009) and regional stability (Risse 2012: 91f; Varvelli 2019, 127). There is also much criticism of the EU’s enduring ‘imperialism’ (Del Sarto 2015) and ‘double standards’ (Börzel, Risse, and Dandashly 2015, 151) towards the MENA region.

2. This is not necessarily the author’s own perspective on the EU, but EU diplomats’ assumed predominant self-understanding.

3. See the full speech at https://eeas.europa.eu/archives/delegations/egypt/press_corner/all_news/news/2012/20121024_1_en.htm; ‘Alhamdulilah’ means ‘praise to God’ and is a frequently used phrase meaning ‘thankfully’, either with or without religious connotation.

4. For the EU Delegation in Cairo, which in 2011 still resided in a rather unsafe high-rise building in Mohandeseen with insufficient escape exits, such security concerns weighted heavily until it eventually moved into more modern and secure premises in the posh Nile City Towers in October 2014.

5. See the entry on Asmaa Mahfouz at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sakharovprize/en/asmaa-mahfouz-2011-arab-spring-egypt/products-details/20200331CAN54200.