Beyond Democracy & Dissensus: Rhetorical Values and Colonial Continuities in the EU's Engagement with Tunisia Since 2011

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the European Union established formal political and economic ties with countries in North Africa and the Middle East, informally reproducing relations rooted in centuries of imperialism, but later including human rights and democratization discursive concerns. These efforts laid the groundwork for subsequent policies such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The EMP distinguished itself by conditioning development assistance and common market access on democratization and human rights respect, which nonetheless were never applied in most countries. The EU’s neighbourhood policy lies its foundations, at least rhetorically, on the idea of extending the scope of European values; this resonates with and was reproduced by scholarly arguments of ‘Normative Power Europe’ according to which the EU’s role in the world is defined by what it does but especially by what it is. The perception of EU values as something intrinsically good hence legitimizes and even dictates its responsibility to transform others in its image. While still somehow accepted even though increasingly contested within EU studies, the idea that the EU acts as a normative power towards its ‘Southern neighbours’ is not widely shared outside the field. Much literature on the relationship, in fact, has long described EU policies as serving member states’ interests in the region while disguising them through rhetorical devices appropriating universally accepted lingo – such as democracy or human rights. Before the 2011 Uprisings, EUrope in fact more or less openly supported dictators such as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia to secure its interests. And while the Uprisings supposedly signalled a break in this pattern – a break supported by discursive commitment to promote ‘deep democracy’ - security and stability quickly regained prominence both in discourse and practice. Against this framework, the aim of this article is to critically analyse the EU’s neighbourhood policy and specifically its relations with Tunisia, by placing them in a context of imperial continuity through a decolonial approach. This will be done by focusing on the specific case of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement – DCFTA or ALECA – proposed by the EU after the 2011 Tunisian Uprising, whose negotiations stalled thanks to the opposition of Tunisian civil society.