The European Union’s Mediterranean Policies after the Arab Spring: Can the Leopard Change its Spots?

Abstract

For more than two decades, the EU has played a pivotal role in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Although it never yielded the hard power of the United States, the EU’s soft power and its deep social, political and economic ties with the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean have provided it with considerable sway in Mediterranean affairs. Through its Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, first launched in 1995, the EU promoted the vision of an open and integrated Mediterranean region that was organically tied to and politically oriented towards the EU.