Europe and Tunisia by Brieg Powel Larbi Sadiki

Author:Brieg Powel, Larbi Sadiki [Brieg Powel, Larbi Sadiki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, General, Social Science, Regional Studies, Political Science
ISBN: 9781136994388
Google: qibGBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-04-29T15:53:11+00:00

Conclusion

This chapter has argued that the securitisation of the EU’s relations with the Mediterranean has led to a weakening of EU pressure on the Tunisian government to implement political reform. By prioritising security issues above other aspects of its relationship with Mediterranean states such as Tunisia, the EU neglects some of the other original objectives of the EMP. Earlier chapters argued that promoting democracy was but one of a number of the aims and objectives of the EU’s relations with Tunisia and the Mediterranean. However, it was argued here that for some EU foreign policy-makers, security was always the overall objective of initiatives such as the EMP. This has also demonstrated that if that security already exists, as it does in the case of Tunisia, the EU appears not to be overly enthusiastic about pursuing any great political reforms that may remove the existing political status quo.

Central to the chapter’s argument is the observation that Tunisia is imagined by the EU on two different levels: one on a state level and the other as part of a wider Mediterranean region. This is reinforced by the EU foreign policy frameworks in which Tunisia is involved, and the fact that no other sub-regional political entities currently exist with which the EU has developed any formal relationship.123 However, closer scrutiny of the representations of the Mediterranean in the discursive structures of the EU reveals a heavily securitised region characterised by threats, conflict and insecurities. Consequently, policy frameworks that are regional or multinational in scope tend to be conditioned by such regional-level discourses. Texts associated with the ENP reflect this trend, with security becoming an ever more important feature of their proposals for future relations with the subjects of the ENP. As it is only within such multilateral policy frameworks that EU relations with Tunisia currently occur, these relations too become subject to the same degree of securitisation as occurs on the regional level.

Furthermore, values have come to play an important role in the EU’s response to its security threats and in its foreign policy more generally. According to democratic peace theory, EU officials have effectively supported the promotion of one value as a means of achieving security for some time. This chapter argues, however, that such officials now argue for the promotion of an entire set of values for the same purpose; that is, to achieve security. This more wholesale promotion of norms and values is reminiscent of observations that the EU is in fact nothing less than a normative power, naturally inclined to structure its foreign policies around commitments to promoting values. To a certain extent, this chapter concurs with this perspective, but argues that as was the case with the promotion of a single value in the democratic peace thesis, in Tunisia, the promotion of norms or values apparently occurs in the context of a more fundamental effort to assure the Union’s security.

Indeed, security and values offer two points at which the discourses of the EU and the Tunisian government converge.

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