Making sense of the EU’s response to the Arab uprisings: foreign policy practice at times of crisis

ABSTRACT

The Arab uprisings of 2011 put into question previously held understandings about the stability of authoritarian regimes in North Africa as well as the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with countries in its southern neighbourhood. Despite early calls on behalf of the EU to change its policies, the Union’s responses in the early stages seemed mostly characterised by continuity. This article claims that certain dispositions and background knowledge developed over several decades vis-à-vis EU’s Mediterranean policies served as a baseline from which EU officials and diplomats acted. Drawing on insights from practice approaches, the article argues that the practical understandings on what the EU can (and cannot) do vis-à-vis partner countries in North Africa create a kind of power politics of practical dispositions. The article focuses on the European Neighbourhood Policy - the EU’s flagship initiative - and builds on a unique set of data that combine policy documents and interviews with about 30 EU officials and national diplomats from before and after the Arab uprisings. In this way, it illustrates how practice relates to change in that even though the EU’s responses drew on an established repertoire of practice, enacting it in a new context opened up new possibilities for action.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab uprisings
• crisis
• ENP
• EU
• Mediterranean
• policy
• practice

Introduction

The breakdown of the incumbent political order in North Africa and the Middle East unfolding as of 2011 have put into question not only previously held understandings about the stability of authoritarian regimes, but also the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with countries in its southern neighbourhood. Political transition in Tunisia, instability in Libya, the re-establishment of military rule in Egypt, civil war in Syria, the emergence of ISIS, and the ongoing refugee crisis present the EU and its member states with a host of challenges and seemingly few opportunities. Thus, studying the EU’s responses to the Arab uprisings seems to provide ample chances to gain further insights on how the EU exercises power in its neighbourhood (or fails to do so) as well as the role of crises in EU diplomacy and foreign policy. Nonetheless, the all but prevalent notion among practitioners and academics now seems to be that if the Arab uprisings have revealed anything, it is the extent to which the EU is unable to shape events in its neighbourhood and just how poorly equipped the Union is when it comes to responding to crises (Balfour 2011, Behr 2012, Peters 2012, Lehne 2014).¹ A range of more or less theoretically informed analyses suggest that the inability of the EU to change its policies stems from, inter alia, the deadlock between EU institutions, postcolonial prejudices, or the hampering cognitive uncertainty that actors experience in the face of rapidly changing circumstances (Tömmel 2013, Pace 2014, Del Sarto 2015, Natorski 2015). Typically, such explanations risk placing too much emphasis on continuity and thus fail to appreciate more subtle instances of change.

In contrast to these accounts, this article argues that in order to understand the ways in which the EU responded to the Arab uprisings, it is necessary to start by uncovering the dispositions and background knowledge of EU diplomats and officials. In a nutshell, we need to start by asking from where EU diplomats and officials draw their actions, rather than to what do they respond. What does the EU’s repertoire of practices to engage with non-member states in North Africa look like? How have these practices developed over time prior to the events of 2011? To what extent have the actions undertaken led to new practical understandings? Focusing primarily on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) – the EU’s flagship initiative towards its southern neighbours – and drawing on recent advancements on practice approaches in International Relations (IR) and EU studies, this article argues that EU policies towards the Mediterranean to a large extent preconfigured its response to the Arab uprisings.

However, by focusing on practice, we are not only able to explore social mechanisms of reproduction. Discrepancies among EU member states in terms of whether to focus on short-term stability or long-term reforms in the southern neighbourhood existed well before 2011. In fact, attempting to circumvent this divide is an essential aspect of the post-Arab uprisings revision of the ENP and this is better understood if we take into account shared practical understandings on what the EU can (and cannot) do vis-à-vis countries in North Africa. The argument here is that there is a power politics of practical dispositions going on in the revision of the ENP from 2011 onwards, and practitioners more or less skilfully draw on the established repertoire of practices to advance certain positions. The outcome of these struggles might appear mainly as a recast of past policies, but it contains elements of displacement which partly change how policies such as the ENP work.

The analysis presented here relies on a combination of semi-structured interviews and archival sources (see Appendix).² First, data from about 20 interviews with EU diplomats as well as officials from the Commission and the Council Secretariat working on the ENP and Euro-Mediterranean relations carried out mainly in Brussels, Madrid, and Rabat during 2008–2010 together with policy documents on the EU’s Mediterranean policies dating as far back as the 1970s have been analysed in order to trace the repertoire of practical knowledge on the EU’s relations with non-member states in the southern neighbourhood that served as a baseline for EU responses to the Arab uprisings.³ Second, working documents (agendas, minutes, letters, and drafts) related to the 2010–2011 revision of the ENP as well as official EU documents and speeches by High Representative (HR) Catherine Aston and Commissioner Stefan Füle have been analysed together with about 10 interviews with EU diplomats and officials at the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Middle East and Maghreb Working (MaMa) Group in the Council.

Consequently, this article draws upon a two-folded research strategy which combines a unique material gathered before as well as after the Arab uprisings. This comparison over time is qualitatively different from taking a snapshot and lets practitioners reflect upon what they were doing “backwards” from the point in time in which the interview was made. It thereby allows for a richer understanding of the practical understandings that guided the EU’s response than a study that would only rely on data gathered from 2011 onwards. In this way, the article contributes to analysing the question of practice and change in EU foreign policy by way of a detailed account of how actors act upon a crisis as well as how past practices inform the present.

The article unfolds as follows. First, it discusses the analytical added-value of practice approaches in the study of EU foreign policy in general and in particular when analysing the EU’s responses to the Arab uprisings. Second, the empirical part of the paper aims to (i) reconstruct the repertoire of practices underlying EU policies towards the Mediterranean and (ii) show how these practical understandings provided a baseline which shaped the initial response. Finally, the paper discusses what the findings entail for the notion of how practice relates to the tension between routine and innovation as actors such as the EU respond to crises.

Practice approaches and the study of EU foreign policy

Drawing upon the introduction to this collection (see Bicchi and Bremberg 2016), practices are here defined as socially meaningful patterns of action which simultaneously embody, act out, and possibly reify background knowledge and discourse in and on the material world (see also Adler and Pouliot 2011). The stuff of practice is often conceived of as being made of mundane, banal, everyday doings. This is true, but the point is not to say that what people do on a daily basis is necessarily interesting per se. The key assumption is rather that everyday doings are consequential for producing social life, something which is to a large extent contingent on situated understandings and reproduced only through human interaction (Schatzki et al. 2001). Thus, action (doing) is constitutive of practices, but action is always specific and located in time. Practices, however, are general classes of action not limited to any specific enactment.

What do insights from practice approaches bring to the study of EU foreign policy? Explaining why, how, and under what conditions the EU acts in international politics usually draws upon rationalist or constructivist theories stressing either utility-maximising or rule-following as the basis for social action (Bretherton and Vogler 2006, Jørgensen et al. 2015). Although rationalist/institutionalist perspectives tend to dominate the field (cf. Manners 2007), a number of important constructivist studies on EU diplomacy and foreign policy have addressed themes such as norm convergence and socialisation of national and EU diplomats (Meyer 2005, Juncos and Pomorska 2014) as well as the role of norms, identities, and discourses in shaping EU external relations writ large (Manners 2002, Carta and Morin 2014). Insights from practice approaches can be said to primarily advance constructivist research on EU foreign policy by taking it beyond a focus on discourse and logics of appropriate behaviour (Adler-Nissen 2016).

For example, Diez (2014, p. 325) has suggested that the discourse on the EU as a “normative power” functions so as to set the boundaries for EU foreign policy. At the same time, any particular discourse is said to be inherently unstable and only temporarily fixed through “practices of articulation”. However, little is usually said about how this actually works. Conversely, this is what a focus on practice as socially meaningful patterns of action seeks to accomplish (cf. Kratochwil 2011). Moreover, focusing on practice challenges the prevalent dichotomy between interest-based and norm-based actions that often structure inquiries in EU studies. Negotiations in the Council of Ministers understood as bargaining between national representatives determined by the relative power of the member states (albeit it is often assumed that the “consensus culture” developed in the Council also plays a role) would be the typically example here (Tallberg 2006, Naurin and Wallace 2009). Insights from practice approaches suggest that interests do not exist outside of their enactment by agents in concrete settings, which means that the size of the national economy, military capacities, etc., tell us little about what it is that determines the outcomes of these negotiations (however, for a different interpretation, see Chelotti 2016). Furthermore, agents are not necessarily socialised into adopting certain norms in order to act appropriately; norms are performed rather than internalised (Kauppi 2003, Saurugger 2010).

This means that when seeking to understand, for example, how the latest revision of the ENP is hammered out between the European Commission, the EEAS, and Council working groups, we should try to get as close as possible to the “the implicit, tacit or unconscious layer of knowledge which enables a symbolic organization of reality” (Reckwitz 2002, p. 246). Power in these settings has more to do with situated micro-processes than abstract resources and capabilities. It has more to do with the struggle to achieve competence and authority in the eyes of other peers, which in turn depends on how agents perform (ranging from argumentation to body language) on the basis of background knowledge. Claiming that “this is how things are done around here” is both an authoritative statement meant to show/teach someone else what to do and a testament that the practitioner has acquired that “knack” necessary to act in that certain setting (Pouliot 2008, see also Bueger 2016).

Furthermore, EU institutions are often ascribed interests and agendas that are thought to overlap or diverge and this in turn affects outcomes (cf. Tömmel 2013). While it might make sense for analytical purposes to assume that the Commission wants X, the Council wants Y, and the Parliament wants Z in relation to, for example, EU trade and association policies with Mediterranean non-member states, it is harder to empirically substantiate such claims due to the complex interactions among practitioners representing these institutions. Drawing upon insights from practice approaches, we should focus less on the institutions as such and more on communities of practice defined as “like-minded groups of practitioners who are informally as well as contextually bound by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice” (Adler 2008, p. 196, see also Wenger 1998). This does not mean that practitioners always have to agree on how to achieve a particular end (e.g. how to best revise the ENP). In fact, the processural, temporary, and conflictual character of practices is key to understand how practice performs community, rather than the other way around (Swindler 2001, Nicolini 2013, see also Bicchi 2016, Graeger 2016). Thus, in terms of understanding how common positions are negotiated (or blocked) in relation to the revisions of the ENP, institutional, or even national, affiliations might not necessarily tell us much. Rather, focusing on practical understandings forged by everyday interactions in transgovernmental networks clustered around the social venues that EU institutions provide takes us further (Adler-Nissen 2014).

Routines, crisis, and change

EU foreign policy is often described in terms of a work in progress shaped by the ways in which member states and common institutions respond to internal inconsistencies and external shocks (Smith 2004, Howorth 2014). The basic story revolves around disrupting events and crises (e.g. the demise of the Soviet Union, the Balkan wars, and 9/11) that call for new ways of doing things together (e.g. the CFSP/CSDP, EU enlargement, and the ENP) which get institutionalised until the next crisis erupts. This picture is not necessarily wrong, but like all explanations that primarily emphasise exogenous factors, it loses sight of how previous experiences structure change in that they set the conditions for how events are interpreted and responded to. This inevitably begs the question of how the notion of practice relates to change and continuity in EU diplomacy and foreign policy. Schatzki suggests that “Material arrangements ubiquitously prefigure practices – that is, the continued happening of the doings and sayings that compose specific practice – by making some actions, inter alia, easier and harder or more direct or circuitous than others” (Schatzki 2011, p. 10). To be sure, practices are repetitive, routinised patterns of action – that is, there is no such thing as a practice that only happens once – but this is not inconsistent with an understanding of practices as displacing and shifting patterns over time (Bueger 2014).

To illustrate, Pouliot and Thérien propose that practices produce ratchet effects by creating baselines for future action since what “social and political actors do (and the way they do it) stems from a know-how that is derived experientially, that is, from the ‘done thing’” (Pouliot and Thérien 2015, p. 23). Thus, a way of reconciling what seems to be two intractable positions (practice as routine vs. innovation) is to think of any particular practice as being nested in broader, overlapping constellations or assemblages of practices and that tensions within such constellations hold a transformative potential from “within” (Adler and Pouliot 2011). Overlap in this sense suggests that change often takes the form of broadening of a given repertoire, rather than clean cuts between the past and present (Adler and Greve 2009).⁴ This also brings a certain understanding of how crises and practice relate to change.

Typically, a crisis is defined as a situation in which actors experience a threat to a valued referent object and are forced to act under conditions of time pressure and high uncertainty (Boin et al. 2005). However, drawing upon insights from practice approaches, crises have less to do with certain objective conditions being met and more about “interpretative indeterminacy and the inadequacy of knowledge” (Reckwitz 2002, p. 255). In other words, a crisis is a situation in which what worked before does not appear to work anymore and the inherently contingent nature of any set of practices is potentially revealed (Hansen 2011). This is highly relevant, not least from a methodological point of view, because practical understandings tend to become articulated when practitioners need to reflect upon whether the situation they are in can be dealt with by existing practices, whether adjustments are needed, or whether something new is called for. Basically, they are forced to justify what they are doing.

By studying “justificatory actions” in response to crises, we do not only learn how such situations are settled, but also something about the background knowledge that gives meaning to the actions (Bueger 2014). It becomes a way of detecting dispositions that underpin the reproduction of certain practices and introduce politics into the process (Leander 2011). In relation to the question of how to make sense of the EU’s response to the Arab uprisings, what is interesting is not so much how the EU diplomats and officials got into a situation in which previous EU policies towards the Mediterranean appeared outdated and inadequate in the face of upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, but rather how they initially managed to revise the ENP without really revising it.

The repertoire of practices in EU Mediterranean policy: from region-building to regulatory convergence

Prior to the Arab uprisings, a set of distinct yet interconnected practices underpinned the EU’s Mediterranean policies. These practices draw upon the notion that the EU has a prominent role to play in the region, albeit they draw upon slightly different practical understandings of what the EU can achieve and how it can promote its interests. On the one hand, there are certain region-building practices such as transfer of regional political dialogue and confidence-building measures, and even though the EU is often assigned a leadership role in the exercise, it was assumed to do so without explicitly imposing “European values” on its Mediterranean partners. On the other hand, there are practices which relate to bureaucratic procedures and the externalisation of EU policies, and the aim of achieving regulatory convergence with EU rules and standards would be the prime example here. Together these practices have underpinned a kind of working arrangement where Commission officials deal more with “technical” aspects, whereas EU diplomats in the Council would be more involved in political cooperation. The point to make is that this repertoire of practices has developed experientially, even though previous European experiences have often served as the impetus (cf. Pouliot and Thérien 2015).

To begin with, the EU’s efforts at region-building in the Mediterranean are almost as old as the process of European integration itself. At the heart of this process lies the goal of harmonising the Union’s economic relations with Mediterranean non-members, which dates back to the 1950s, and the need to regulate commercial exchange with former European colonies as a corollary to developing a common trade policy and it has become even more salient as the Internal Market has been taking shape over the past thirty years (Pierros et al. 1999). By the 1970s, the “Mediterranean” had become part of a common European repertoire of concept and labels, and at this time diplomatic measures such as political dialogue with Mediterranean non-members were also being developed. In response to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the EC’s southern enlargement in the 1980s, the EC/EU sought to reinvigorate its Mediterranean policies in ways that stayed true to the established practice of regulating economic relations with Mediterranean non-members, while introducing a few novelties such as multilateral networks as well as a more neo-liberal approach to development (Bicchi 2007).

At this point in time, European diplomats and officials had also started to depict the geographical proximity and the “closeness of all types of relations” between member states and non-members around the Mediterranean basin as something that made the stability and prosperity of Europe ultimately dependent on the stability and prosperity of its southern neighbourhood. The Commission even suggested that “What is at issue is our security in the broadest sense” (European Commission 1990, p. 2). In March 1992, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, described the situation in the Maghreb as a “ticking time-bomb” only to be defused by promoting an enhanced regional cooperation (quoted in Hernando de Larramendi and Mañe Estrada 2009, p. 76).⁵

However, most diplomatic initiatives to promote Mediterranean regional cooperation in the early 1990s were not launched as part of a common European exercise.⁶ Although ultimately unsuccessful, they taught European diplomats valuable lessons. First, direct US involvement in any common European proposal towards the Mediterranean region was likely to cause more problems than it would solve. Second, there was the need for adding a dimension that was missing from previous frameworks, namely, political and security cooperation in a similar vein to what had been achieved within Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE) at the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, in order to convince northern member states of the importance of pursuing region-building projects, the geographical scope needed to be expanded to include not only the Maghreb/North Africa, but also the Eastern Mediterranean/Middle East. In fact, balancing between the peripheries of Europe has a long pedigree in EU foreign policy.⁷

It is in this vein that the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) was launched in 1995. By then, an understanding had taken shape among European diplomats and EU officials that something had to be done in order to strike a balance between promoting the EU’s interests on its eastern and southern borders. It was clear that the EU was about to embark on a process of enlargement which would threaten to shift the balance away from the Mediterranean basin exactly at a time when economic stagnation, illegal migration, and the rise of radical Islamist movements in North Africa were starting to gain the attention of diplomats and officials in southern Europe (Barbé 1999).

The EMP set out to establish a common area of peace and stability as well as to create an area of shared prosperity. While the respect for universal human rights was written into the declaration, it also stressed the need to respect different political systems, and the principle of non-intervention was enshrined as a way of assuring all parties that the EMP was not an attempt to impose “European values”.⁸ Euro-Mediterranean Foreign Affairs minister meetings were held on an almost yearly basis from the late 1990s until 2008, which according to some interviewees had started to foster a habit of getting together among diplomats from the participating states.⁹ According to one EU official:

What is happening is the creation of a regular habit of meetings, getting together. First they were the 15 + 12 [the EMP], then 37 [after EU enlargement] and now 43 [the UfM], so it’s an important and numerous group. The habit of meeting, the now natural habit of meeting in a regional setting, not only calling each other bi-laterally, creates the ministerial conclusions which provides political responses to the various challenges … ¹⁰

However, besides the establishment of Association Agreements between the EU and basically all Mediterranean non-members, progress on regional objectives was slow. After 11 September 2001, EU member states increasingly shifted focus towards finding ways to cooperate with authoritarian regimes in North Africa on issues such as counterterrorism and migration and downplayed regional cooperation or democracy (Joffé 2008, Wolff 2012). But as the momentum in the EMP was slowly fading, something else was emerging on the horizon.

In the run-up towards the Eastern enlargement, the Commission proposed that the EU needed to develop a comprehensive policy on aid, development, and cooperation towards neighbouring states in order to prevent the build-up of a “sharp delineation” between EU members and closely situated non-members of the expanding Union (Prodi 2002). The ENP was launched in 2004 and the explicit focus on regulatory convergence between EU member states and non-members constituted a novel feature. EU legislation relating to the Internal Market had at that time expanded significantly, and promoting regulatory convergence in order to address non-tariff barriers to trade was in many ways the next logical step in the EU’s entrenched practice of seeking to harmonise economic relations with non-members.¹¹ Democracy promotion is a goal within the ENP, although arguably first and foremost related to improving governance capacities among the partner countries.¹² According to one EU official:

There is no clearly spelled out policy of the EU towards our neighbours, especially towards our most ambitious neighbours such as Ukraine and Morocco, or Israel in some cases. The idea and the logic in which we are moving is that we will need to find ways to associate them into our decision-making processes because we want to integrate them into some of our Internal Market policies.¹³

The ENP is often taken as an example of how the EU has toned down its region-building aspirations in the Mediterranean in favour of promoting a kind of hub-and-spoke scheme (Del Sarto and Schumacher 2005). However, it should be kept in mind that bilateral dynamics existed already within the EMP and the EU has sought to promote regional cooperation also after the ENP, such as the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in 2008.¹⁴ Instead, the advancements in Euro-Mediterranean cooperation after 2008 seen from the perspective of the EU have been achieved on a bilateral level with a handful of “avant-garde” countries such as Morocco, Jordan, Israel, and to a lesser extent Tunisia and Egypt. These experiences to a large extent formed the state of play in terms of practical understandings among EU diplomats and officials as the Commission initiated a review of the ENP in 2010, just a couple of months before a young man set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.

The EU’s initial response to the Arab uprisings: responding to crisis by doing more of the same

After a zigzagging initial response to the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, the Foreign Affairs Council of the EU met on 31 January 2011 and the ministers expressed their support for the “democratic aspirations” of the Tunisian and Egyptian people (Council of the EU 2011a). Shortly afterwards, the European Council called upon HR Ashton to develop a EU package of measures to support transition processes in the region (European Council 2011). Ashton then visited Tunis, where she made clear that “We want to be Tunisia’s strongest ally in their move towards democracy” (Ashton 2011a). A week later she visited Cairo, stating that “The EU stands ready to accompany the peaceful and orderly transition to a civilian and democratic government and to support Egyptian efforts to improve their economic situation and increase social cohesion” (Ashton 2011b). In March, Commissioner Füle gave the by now famous speech at the European Parliament, saying that

we must show humility about the past. Europe was not vocal enough in defending human rights and local democratic forces in the region. Too many of us fell prey to the assumption that authoritarian regimes were a guarantee of stability in the region. (Füle 2011)

Following upon these public gestures of support, the EEAS and the Commission published in March 2011 a joint communication proposing a “partnership for democracy and shared prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean” (European Commission 2011a). At the heart of the communication was the so-called more-for-more principle, stipulating that increased support in terms of financial assistance, enhanced mobility, and greater access to the EU’s Internal Market was to be made available to countries undertaking political and economic reforms. In a speech to the European Parliament, Ashton described what should be the guiding principles of the EU’s response to the Arab Spring: “Overall, an incentive-based approach is needed, with greater differentiation among countries. The guiding philosophy is ‘more for more’ … Not dictating outcomes but supporting pluralism, accountability, deep democracy and shared prosperity” (Ashton 2011c).

Another joint communication by the EEAS and the Commission was published in May 2011, launching the revised ENP which was said to focus much more on supporting “deep democracy” and “sustainable economic growth” in partner countries than previous versions (European Commission 2011b). The EU recognised that many challenges are common to all countries in the region, but the Union is prepared to support each country on a differentiated basis focusing on the so-called three M’s (money, mobility, and markets).¹⁵

Besides public endorsement and increased funding, the EU also sought to increase the diplomatic capacity to coordinate various initiatives towards the region. In July 2011 the high-ranking Spanish diplomat, Bernardino León, was assigned the role as EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the Southern Mediterranean. His task was essentially to support the political dialogue with the southern neighbours and assist the coordination of efforts among the EU institutions, member states, financial institutions, and the private sector (Council of the EU 2011b).¹⁶ High-level task forces co-chaired by Ashton and political leaders of the partner countries were also set up as tools for enhanced political dialogue.

Moreover, León was a key figure in EU–US coordination vis-à-vis their responses to the Arab Spring. For example, William Taylor (Head of the US State Department’s Special Office for Coordination of Middle East Transitions) co-chaired informal meetings with him in Brussels, and several such meetings were held with other European high-ranking diplomats, including Turkey, working on national responses to the Arab Spring. In these settings, the US envoy would often brief on the situation in Tunisia, the British on Egypt, and the Italian on Libya.¹⁷ Léon and Taylor also worked together in the summer of 2013 on EU and US responses to the military coup in Egypt that ousted President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Both the EU and the USA had endorsed Morsi and the Brotherhood after the 2012 elections, and the need to restore civilian rule quickly became the leitmotif in EU’s reaction to the military coup. Ashton and US Secretary of State, John Kerry, issued a joint statement in August 2013 saying that they “support basic democratic principles, not any particular personalities or parties” (Ashton and Kerry 2013). Ashton nonetheless visited Egypt shortly after the coup to meet with representatives of the new regime, including Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, and Egypt is now involved in the process of developing a new ENP action plan.¹⁸

The EU's engagement with Egypt despite the re-establishment of military rule can in many ways be seen as a return to the status quo ante, and it would not be the only example of continuity rather than change in the EU’s responses to the Arab uprisings. It is by now well-known that the Commission had been preparing a revision of the ENP already in 2010 and this to a large extent formed the basis for the March and May 2011 communications. In fact, many of the proposals included in the communications can be found in working documents, drafts, and minutes from 2010. Still, what appears to be the main novelty in the 2011 version of the ENP is the emphasis on some kind of democratic conditionality by which the EU would distance itself from the ways in which it had dealt with authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East prior to the Arab Spring. However, a working document entitled “Typology of proposals resulting from the ENP review” mentions “more explicit conditionality” and it has already been shown (see above) that the idea of differentiation between partner countries on the basis of their level of commitment to regulatory convergence with the EU was there right from the start of the ENP.

Beyond the Arab uprisings: the unintended consequences of trying not to do too much

It is quite striking how much of what was presented as tailored responses to the Arab uprisings actually resembles already existing components in the EU’s repertoire of practices towards the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, EU diplomats and officials involved in shaping these responses describe how the protests in Tunisia and Egypt were totally unexpected and that an acute sense of uncertainty as to what they might lead to characterised the discussions in the MaMa Working Group in early 2011.¹⁹ Adding to this, the EEAS was still under construction (having been launched in 2010), meaning that there were still a host of unresolved issues in terms of its role vis-à-vis the Commission and the Council at this time. It was nonetheless clear that the EU had to do something. Many EU diplomats from northern and eastern member states were pushing hard for the “more-for-more” principle to be adopted, whereas their colleagues from southern member states were more hesitant. In fact, similar discussions had taken place during the 2010 review process: “we called it like that [more-for-more], but in reality we had done it before already” as one interviewee phrased it.²⁰ What had changed by early 2011 was the situation in which arguments for the principle could be made, and certain practitioners such as Commissioner Füle sought to take advantage of this possibility.²¹

But there was never any strong consensus among EU diplomats on what the principle would actually entail. Even though there was a momentum in favour of stressing “more-for-more” at the beginning of the Arab Spring, discussions in the MaMa Working Group quickly centred on Egypt, which some members were saying was in all circumstances too important to be subject to any strict notion of democratic conditionality.²² Also, several interviewees describe that in the summer of 2011 (i.e. after the communications in March and May), there were “very tough” discussions between members of the MaMa Working Group and Working Party on Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Eastern Europe) Working Party on how to strike a balance between countries in North Africa and Eastern Europe within the overall ENP framework.²³ The disagreement revolved around the issue of whether, in the short to medium term, the pressing needs of the countries in North Africa should be prioritised over their willingness and ability to reform – basically a chicken-or-egg problematique that cannot be understood without taking into account decades of EU policy-making towards the Mediterranean, the outcome of which might appear as a pragmatic response to a complicated circumstance to some EU officials, whereas it might come across as deeply frustrating to others. Some even suggest that “the way the EU functions has aggravated the crises”.²⁴

This divide is further reflected in the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions of June 2011 and December 2011, as well as the very short conclusion in June 2012. Also, article 4 (on differentiation, partnership, and co-financing) of the 2014 regulation of the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) clearly shows the divide as it stipulates that EU support to ENP countries shall be incentive based and differentiated in form and amounts, although it needs to take into account the needs and absorption capacity of the partner countries as much as their commitments to and progress in implementing mutually agreed reform objectives related to building a “deep and sustainable” democracy (OJEU 2014).

As of 2015, the EU is carrying out a new revision of the ENP, partly in response to the post-Arab Spring developments in North Africa and the Middle East (European Commission 2015). Several interviewees suggest that the EU cannot really offer the southern partner countries anything new, expect perhaps more funds. According to one EU official, “we’re basically going back to what we did before”.²⁵ Another suggests that the “more-for-more” principle was ill-conceived from the beginning and “we should never have said it”.²⁶ This is because it is said to give neither clear carrots nor credible sticks, and with 28 member states there will always be someone in the Council taking the side of one particular ENP country, effectively preventing the EU from taking a strong stance. The 2011 version of the ENP is furthermore described as a “hybrid-product” in which the EU managed to place an unusual emphasis on human rights and democracy, whereas the 2015 version will be more in line with previous versions (albeit with a more explicit focus on security). However, the principle of differentiation seems to have gained a somewhat different meaning as a consequence of the Arab Spring, as the role of EU Delegations is emphasised in terms drafting ENP action plans and implementing what EU officials and representatives of partner countries agree upon, or as one interviewee put it: “the colleagues that have revised the ENP this time around have not had that much fun, but the ones that will implement it on the ground will have much more so”.²⁷

Conclusions

With the re-establishment of military rule in Egypt and only half-hearted responses from the EU, it might seem obvious that the “more-for-more” principle forcefully championed in 2011 was effectively buried in the summer of 2013. Moreover, an incentive-based approach appears not to provide the EU with the appropriate means to influence countries either lacking an effective government (Libya) or being ravaged by civil war (Syria). This article argues that in order to make sense of the EU’s response to the Arab Spring in 2011, it is necessary to grasp what the baseline of practical understandings looked like in terms of the EU’s Mediterranean policies. Statements from HR Ashton and Commissioner Füle suggest that there was a need to justify what the EU was doing by seeking to dissociate its responses from what the EU had been doing in the past. The revision of the ENP and the launch of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity were in many regards an attempt to give a new impetus to Euro-Mediterranean cooperation on the basis of more emphasis on democracy, but in terms of what it offered (increased funds, potentially greater market access, and prospects for better mobility), it did not go beyond the established practice of seeking to harmonise economic and political relations with non-member states.

In practice, the proposals in 2011 in many ways took on the character of a recast of the past, particularly the notion of partnership backed up by not only EU funding but also diplomatic efforts to enhance political dialogue resonates well with proposals stemming back to the 1990s and the early stages of the EMP. Admittedly, this is not in itself a very original conclusion. However, in the light of the two-folded research strategy applied here, it comes across less as a sign of impotence or disingenuous policy-making and more as an attempt to bridge profound disagreements within the EU on how much emphasis should be placed on promoting democracy vis-à-vis other goals. In this regard, it matters that EU diplomats and officials knew where the limits to consensus in the Council are to be found. The notion of positive conditionality inherent in the principle of “more for more” can be understood as a move on behalf of certain actors seeking not to explicitly upset the balance between perceived interests: northern/eastern vs. southern EU member states; eastern vs. southern ENP countries; short-term stability vs. long-term transformation. This analysis thus not only provides a glimpse of the power politics of practical dispositions in the Council and the Commission as conflicts are reproduced by anticipation, but it also shows the strategies used by actors who know the game.

The findings analysed here does not suggest that “more for more” was embraced across the board – quite the opposite – but what is interesting is that it has made its way into the 2014 regulation of the ENI and is now part of the repertoire to be used by EU diplomats and officials. Another interesting finding is that practitioners in the EEAS suggest that an important lesson from the 2011 revision of the ENP is that it does not matter how much talk there is about differentiation among partner countries in terms of how much and what kind of support the EU would grant if this is not accompanied by higher degrees of discretion in how the action plans are worked out. Moving this process partly away from Brussels and to the EU Delegations in the partner countries can, of course, be seen not only as a move to try and support local ownership, but also (and possibly more important) as a way to circumvent potential tensions between EU member states.

Whether this will actually lead to substantial changes in terms of what will be included in these action plans or whether the newest revision of the ENP really will lead to increased opportunities for a few rather than all partner countries (i.e. differentiation) is too early to tell; but the main conclusion of this study is that change happens as a function of revisiting past practices and adopting them to new circumstances. By mapping the baseline of practical understandings shaped by decades of EU policy-making towards the Mediterranean and contrasting it with developments after the Arab Spring, the article gives an empirical account of incremental, step-wise change in EU foreign policy that is different from interest-based or norm-based accounts that would posit that in order for policies to change, it is necessary that actors’ preferences change. It comes closer to institutional accounts stressing path dependency in EU policy-making, but it points to different mechanisms of changes as the Arab uprisings do not necessarily take on the role of a crisis that disrupts a stable equilibrium, but rather as an event that unveils the inherent contingency of the EU’s repertoire of practices towards its southern neighbourhood. Moreover, policies such as the ENP change as a function of EU diplomats and officials cleverly apply the skills necessary to muddle through.

Finally, the findings discussed in this article concur with many others in this collection by way of showing that in order to better understand where “the action” is to be found in EU foreign policy, a lot is to be gained from moving beyond formal decision-making arenas in Brussels, whether it is to the EU Delegations or CSDP operations or as in this case, revisiting a repertoire of practices. While it cannot necessarily be assumed that the mechanism of change identified here is at work across all areas of EU diplomacy and foreign policy, it at least opens up for this possibility which serves as an invitation to continue the conversation on practice and change that ideally should not only be confined to EU foreign policy, but also include European diplomatic practices more broadly conceived.

Acknowledgements

For insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article, I wish to thank the participants at the workshops in Stockholm and London, in particular, Federica Bicchi, Christian Bueger, Knud-Erik Jürgensen, Christoph Meyer, and Vincent Pouliot, as well as Stefan Borg, Anna Michalski, Mark Rhinard, and the two anonymous reviewers of European Security.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributors

Niklas Bremberg is Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Stockholm and has been visiting researcher at the University of Toronto, the University of Liverpool and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research focuses on regional security practices, security communities, and EU foreign and security policy, especially towards North Africa. His publications include the research monograph Diplomacy and Security Community-Building: EU Crisis Management in the Western Mediterranean (Routledge) and various articles on EU foreign and security policy, crisis management and Spanish-Moroccan relations in journals such as Journal of common market studies, Cooperation & conflict, European security and mediterranean politics.

Notes

1. However, for a different take on the EU’s response to the Arab uprisings and the sources of its power vis-à-vis countries in its southern neighbourhood, see Borg and Bremberg (n.d.).

2. Various research strategies and techniques can be used in order to study European diplomatic practices; see Bicchi and Bremberg (2016) as well as Adler-Nissen (2014), Bueger (2014), Bueger and Gadinger (2014), Pouliot (2010, 2015). For examples of studies on EU foreign and security policy drawing upon practice approaches, see Bicchi (2011), Bremberg (2015a, 2015b).

3. Interviews with EU officials and diplomats are valuable as a means to map practices by having practitioners reflect on their doings, although this of course is to be treated as (reflexive) accounts of practice. The stock of unspoken assumptions and tacit know-how can nonetheless be gauged by having practitioners describe as meticulously as possible what they do on a daily basis as well as reflect on different scenarios relating to their work in order to get a sense of how they perceive the range of possible actions. Official documents are also valuable in terms of mapping practices as they enable and constrain practitioners to do certain things (i.e. it is not the textual representation as such that is of interest, but the practice to which the text is related). Drafts, notes, and minutes are particularly interesting in this regard as such textual artefacts can be used to trace practical dispositions that guided what, for instance, eventually ended up in the final version of a policy document.

4. As March (1981, p. 564) once noted, “Change takes place because most of the time most people in an organization go about what they are supposed to do; they are intelligently attentive to their environments and their jobs”.

5. Spanish diplomats and policy-makers were particularly influential in shaping EU’s Mediterranean policy in the 1990s, playing a similar role as France did in the 1970s (Gillespie 2000).

6. One such example was the Italian–Spanish initiative on a Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CSCM) in 1991. However, it was stillborn as the major European partners were at best indifferent (France) or hostile (the UK) towards it, but perhaps most important was that the USA was totally against it (Bicchi 2007).

7. For example, in the early 1970s, French President George Pompidou greeted French-Hispanic rapprochement (after the signing of a military agreement between the two countries) by stressing how important this was in order to: “équilibrer cette Europe, en rendant plus évidente l’influence méditerranéene et latine” (quoted in Bicchi 2007, p. 89).

8. Euro-Mediterranean regional cooperation was then stipulated to cover three areas: political and security; economic and financial; social and cultural (i.e. much like the CSCE/OSCE model). EU officials as well as national diplomats from EU member states and Mediterranean partners were responsible for setting up the meetings and updating the work programme of the EMP. Over time, relations between these practitioners became increasingly informal (Aliboni and Ammor 2009, p. 9).

9. Interview #1 (Council of the EU), Interview #6 (Council of the EU), Interview #19 (European Commission), Interview #20 (European Commission), Interview #21 (Council of the EU), Interview #12 (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Interview #17 (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Interview #15 (Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

10. Interview #21 (Council of the EU).

11. Interview #2 (European Commission), Interview #3 (European Commission), Interview #4 (European Commission), Interview #5 (European Commission), Interview #7 (European Commission), Interview #8 (European Commission).

12. Interview #14 (European Commission).

13. Interview #5 (European Commission).

14. Interestingly, the rationale of the UfM (i.e. focus on concrete projects such as energy, transport, and education, while institutionalizing the principle of North–South co-ownership) had politicized Euro-Mediterranean cooperation to an unprecedented level prior to the Arab Spring. Instead of diverting attention from the underlying conflicts in the region in order to focus on “practical” and “concrete” issues (like the EMP had somewhat successfully done in the past), the UfM rather served to exacerbate them. Interview #17 (Spanish Embassy to the Netherlands).

15. For example, funds up to €1.2 billion were made available on top of the €5.7 billion already budgeted for the ENP in the period 2011–2013. However, it should be noted that the quite substantial increase in funds committed by the EU through various instruments and programmes has not led to an increase in money actually being spent; rather the opposite has happened since 2011 due to the deteriorating situation in many North African countries (Bicchi 2014).

16. As EUSR, León was also tasked to establish coordination on behalf of the EU with relevant local partners and international and regional organizations (e.g. UN, African Union, and the League of Arab States). In 2014, Léon was appointed UN Special Representative for Libya.

17. Interview #25 (US State Department).

18. Interview #31 (EEAS).

19. Interview #26 (Council of the EU), Interview #27 (Council of the EU), Interview #29 (Council of the EU), Interview #30 (EEAS), Interview #31 (EEAS).

20. Interview #31 (EEAS).

21. Interview #29 (Council of the EU).

22. Interview #27 (Council of the EU).

23. Interview #26 (Council of the EU), Interview #27 (Council of the EU), Interview #31 (EEAS).

24. Interview #29 (Council of the EU).

25. Interview #31 (EEAS).

26. Interview #30 (EEAS).

27. Interview #30 (EEAS).

Appendix. List of interviews

Table

No.	Position	Date/location
1	Council of the EU, General Secretariat, DG E VIII Defence Issues (ESDP and the Mediterranean)	6 November 2008, Brussels
2	European Commission, DG Relex (Maghreb Unit)	6 November 2008, Brussels
3	European Commission, DG AGRI (Maghreb Unit)	2 December 2008, Brussels
4	European Commission, DG Relex (Policy Officer, Middle East and Southern Mediterranean, Euro-Med Unit)	30 September 2008, Brussels
5	European Commission, DG Relex (European Neighbourhood Policy)	29 September 2008, Brussels
6	Council of the EU (Policy Unit, Administrator, Middle East /Mediterranean Task Force)	23 October 2008, Brussels
7	European Commission, DG Relex (European Neighbourhood Policy)	18 November 2008, Brussels
8	European Commission, DG Trade (Maghreb Unit)	27 November 2008, Brussels
9	European Commission, DG Relex (Instrument for Stability)	7 October 2008, Brussels
10	Moroccan mission to the EC (Ad hoc working group on Morocco’s “Advanced Status”)	31 October 2008, Brussels
11	Council of the EU (Policy Unit, Principal Administrator, Middle East/Gulf/Mediterranean Task Force)	27 October 2008, Brussels
12	Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Subdirector General del Magreb)	16 March 2009, Madrid
13	Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Área de Asuntos del Mediterráneo)	16 March 2009, Madrid
14	Delegation of the European Commission (Conseiller Affaires Politique, Commerce, Information, Culture)	4 June 2009, Rabat
15	Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Chef du Service Coopération Régionale Euro-Méditerranéenne)	5 June 2009, Rabat
16	Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Chef de la Division de l’UE)	5 June 2009, Rabat
17	Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ambassador at Large for Mediterranean Affairs)	19 July 2010, Madrid
18	Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Subdirector General del Magreb)	19 July 2010, Madrid
19	European Commission, DG Relex (Desk Officer Morocco)	5 October 2010, Brussels
20	European Commission, DG Relex (Policy Officer, Middle East and Southern Mediterranean, Euro-Med Unit)	6 October 2010, Brussels
21	Council of the EU (Policy Unit, Administrator, Middle East/Mediterranean Task Force)	5 October 2010, Brussels
22	Spanish Embassy to the Netherlands (Ambassador)	7 October 2010, the Hague
23	Council of the EU (Policy Unit, Principal Administrator, Middle East/Gulf/Mediterranean Task Force)	4 October 2010, Brussels
24	Council of the EU (Policy Unit, Principal Administrator, Middle East/Gulf/Mediterranean Task Force)	4 October 2010, Brussels
25	U.S. State Department (Head of Special Office for Middle Eastern Transitions)	11 June 2014, Washington, DC
26	Council of the EU (Sweden’s Ambassador (former), Political and Security Committee)	16 April 2015, Stockholm
27	Council of the EU (Sweden’s Representative, MaMa Council Working group)	15 May 2015, London/Telephone
28	Council of the EU (Sweden’s Ambassador (current), Political and Security Committee)	16 June 2015, Brussels
29	Council of the EU (Belgium’s Representative, MaMa Council Working group)	16 June 2015, Brussels
30	EEAS (Head of ENP Unit)	16 June 2015, Brussels
31	EEAS (Permanent Chair of the MaMa Council Working group)	17 June 2015, Brussels
32	Moroccan Representation to the EU (Diplomat responsible for the ENP)	17 June 2015, Brussels