Policy Implementation Outside the European Union: “Managing” the European Youth Cooperation Schemes in the Arab-Mediterranean Countries

Young people in Arab-Mediterranean countries have been targeted through various European cooperation schemes since the mid-1990s, with a revived interest in “youth” after the Arab Uprisings. Three of those schemes, namely the Euro-Med Youth Programme, Youth Partnership between European Union and the Council of Europe, and the youth-related initiatives of the Anna Lindh Foundation are among the most significant of those initiatives. These schemes share three common characteristics: They directly and exclusively target young people; they geographically cover and are implemented in the southern Mediterranean countries including the Arab-Mediterranean ones; and, they are fully or partially funded by the European Union. The diversification of the implementation mechanisms associated to these schemes located under the roof of different international organisations (IOs), namely the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the Union for the Mediterranean, in a way to work in cooperation with the national authorities and administrations in the non-EU countries, creates a complex world of implementation with regards to the EU governance. This paper questions the problems related to such an implementation complexity in the light of the literature combining IOs and implementation (Joachim et al., 2008). Accordingly, the paper analyses and compares the institutional resources (instruments/programmes, administrative/implementation mechanisms and financial resources); domestic factors (domestic implementation structures; domestic politics and the transfer of outcomes into national policies); as well as, the inter-organisational cooperation. The data processed for this paper is collected through the research conducted within the SAHWA: Researching Arab Mediterranean Youth: Towards a New Social Contract project funded by the EU’s FP7 Programme. Additional nine interviews with the representatives in charge of the management of the European youth cooperation schemes were conducted with the funding from the research project No: BAP-08-11-2015-012 of the Middle East Technical University.