After the "Arab Spring" - What Season Next for the EU Neighbourhood Policy towards the Mediterranean?

The 2011 uprisings and changes inside the authoritarian Arab systems seem to represent the strong and unbroken will of the respective people for democracy. Unfortunately the process to reach democracy is stony and full of obstacles to get rid of the old regimes. Currently, the processes of transition do not show a unique phenomenology, but a huge variety of struggles between old elites and new movements to establish a new order. This poses a number of questions to the EU foreign policy, and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as one of the main branches in Mediterranean politics in particular: Before the 2011 events, the impact of the ENP on the democratization of systems of authoritarian rule in the MENA region can be characterised as “Expectation-Implementation-Gap”, resulting from the tension between a normative ascription about the EU foreign policy''s value orientation and the strongly interest-based implementation practice in the Mediterranean ENP context. The hypothesis about the interest-driven logic of EU foreign policy in its near abroad is, at the time of writing, supported by the empirical evidence on Egypt. The de facto military coup (in slow motion within the last 9 months) by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was not further commented upon by the policy of the European Union that set new but not further specified accents on “deep democracy” and a “Partnership of Democracy and Shared Prosperity”. In fact, the strong rhetoric action of the EU was not supported by a re-direction of its policy. Even in a situation with dozens of protesters against the military rule killed and thousands injured (for the time between 18 and 24 November 2011), the reactions of EU and member states governments are quite modest compared with the level of violence and the ideas of a new partnership declared in spring 2011. It seems that, again, the EU foreign policy is trapped in the dilemma between dedication to democracy values and its interest in maintenance of stability (for prosperity) within the near abroad. This contribution argues that this dilemma of European foreign policy can only be overcome by a careful re-definition of central concepts of the EU foreign policy. A strong impact on the democratization of the Mediterranean countries can only be expected by a policy risking some of the central EU interests for the sake of the support of democratic forces. The article first demonstrates the ENP “Expectation-Implementation-Gap” based on its empirical results on Egypt and secondly endeavours to re-conceptualize some highly contested EU foreign policy concepts to achieve a reduction in the normative tension between the EU''s democracy and stability orientation. Cairo, 29 November 2011