4. The EU and the use of sanctions in the Arab Spring: lessons learned from the case of Tunisia and Egypt.

As one of the most important actors in the Mediterranean region, the European Union (EU) played an active role in the events of the Arab Spring. The revolts that took place from Tunisia to Syria urged the EU and its member to act jointly and to assist the democratic transitions sparked by the civil societies. Among the diplomatic and economic tools, the EU resorted to a variety of restrictive measures to assist the transitions and consolidate their results. The objective of this paper is to analyze and assess the restrictive measures used by the EU in the Arab Spring. The evaluation of international sanctions is still under investigated and the case of the EU has been only marginally studied. As part of a larger research, this paper aims at evaluating the use that the EU makes of sanctions and their impact in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt. The case selection is justified by the fact that the EU has acted independently from the Security Council. Another case would be Syria, but the paper intends to consolidate the findings where the acute moment of the crisis is over. The hypothesis is that the EU used sanctions in a way that could not be assessed with the conventional criteria for sanctions success, therefore the answer to the question of this paper will contribute to elaborate a new method to measure the effectiveness of international targeted sanctions and it will contribute to the debate on how the EU deals with authoritarian regimes.