BI: From the North African standpoint, why did the Barcelona process come into existence ten years ago?

Jamai: The 1995 Barcelona process is composed of three dimensions: security, economy and civil society. Because the stability of the region was vital to Europe, security was the key motivation from the European side. From the North African side it was more a question of economic development and expanding trade with Europe. So there was a contradiction in all this. Also, as much as the North African regimes were willing to have better economic relations with Europe, they were not very welcoming of the civil society dimension. Of course, civil society itself in North Africa pushed for this basket, to use Barcelona to leverage its position vis-a-vis the regimes.

BI: In retrospect, what aspects of Barcelona were successful, and which failed?

Jamai: Security has not really succeeded. In 2000, the Euro-Med was scheduled to produce a charter of peace and stability, but the effort was stifled due to the Israeli-Palestinian and Western Sahara conflicts. Security did not really progress at the level of EU institutions, though at the bilateral level there is progress.

Turning to the economy, you measure success by the level of disbursement of funding for projects. The first five years were a striking failure in this respect. Out of 3 billion euros pledged, only 875 million were disbursed. In 2002-3, the trend was more positive: of 2.3 billion euros pledged, 1.6 billion were disbursed. Indeed in 2003, 83 percent was disbursed. So the mechanism is working more efficiently. On the other hand, in the first five years funding was supposed to come directly to projects and bypass clumsy North African government administrations. Now money is being given directly to the governments. This explains the higher disbursement rates, but you need to question the efficacy of monies disbursed. Meanwhile, the balance of North African-EU trade, without Algerian oil, has worsened from the North African perspective. This means our economies have not grown stronger, with all the negative consequences this has for our societies.

Finally, civil society didn't really advance because the regimes have not been sensitive to what Europe is trying to do. But even though this basket has not been efficient in terms of advancing civil society in Morocco, its existence played a role by empowering people. It could do more, but the EU policy is an important step forward. Also, the relationship between France and Morocco and Tunisia has discouraged the EU from exerting the necessary pressure on these regimes to liberalize politically at a faster rate.

BI: Apropos France, do you see any connection between the recent rioting and the Barcelona issues?

Jamai: This is a French-French problem at this point, really a problem of economic integration.

BI: How would you compare the Barcelona effort to the American effort in the same fields in North Africa?

Jamai: The hard fact is the money. The US gives Egypt and Israel around $5 billion a year. The most optimistic estimate for Barcelona for the first five years commitment was 5 billion euro, the actual reality was around 3 billion, and not all of that was disbursed.

The US is also militarily superior and can intervene. Despite all the criticism of American strategy and the Bush doctrine, when a journalist was jailed in Morocco or Tunis it was not the EU that obtained his/her liberation; it was Colin Powell and the State Department. I would have loved to see the EU be more assertive in terms of human rights.

BI: What would you like Barcelona to do in the coming ten years?

Jamai: We need to think really about the conditionality of aid, comprising not only economic reform but also the level of respect for human rights, free elections, etc. We should find a way to link aid to the advancement of political openness. One of the triggers of openness in Morocco happened in the early 1990s, when the European Parliament voted not to give aid. As a result, King Hassan II made changes, there was amnesty for political prisoners in 1994, and new organizations for human rights emerged. The negotiating power of the EU with Tunisia and Morocco is much greater than what its policy on the ground shows, because they need good economic relations with the EU.

The most important issue for us is regional integration among the southern Mediterranean countries. Our economies are too small to withstand the pressure of economic opening, so if we don't integrate our markets we will be wiped out, and we have completely failed on this level. Another key to advancement in this region is the Western Sahara problem, which prevents closer relations between Morocco and Algeria. The EU can say to Algeria and Morocco, solve these problems and your economic benefits will be huge. The EU can provide economic incentives to make these things happen.- Published 24/11/2005 © bitterlemons-international.org

Aboubakr Jamai is editor of Lakome.com. He is former editor of the Casablanca-based Le Journal Hebdomadaire.

For ten years now, the Barcelona process has been trying to organize the Euro-Mediterranean relationship around a new collective philosophy of security. The failure of the political and security basket of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) was obvious and immediate. A more pragmatic approach was invoked after the 9/11 terror attacks, leading to some progress in some specific areas, yet apparently confirming that the Europeans have abandoned their overall regional stabilization design for the time being.

The EMP was indeed initially designed mainly to tackle security issues. It was launched after the fall of the Berlin wall, a historic moment when the Europeans started worrying about an emerging "Mediterranean threat". The security concept bolstering the European initiative was based on an assessment of danger analyzed both in "soft" and "hard" terms: the Mediterranean was considered a highly unstable place because it combined economic backwardness with political unrest and military proliferation. Migration trends also suggested that the social integration of migrants would soon become a top domestic priority for European states, thus feeding the fear of an "internal threat"--a burning topic that re-emerged recently with the riots in France.

The different dimensions of security had therefore to be comprehensively addressed in order to propose long term solutions and work in partnership with Southern Mediterranean countries. In 1995 the Middle East Peace process was progressing, offering a unique opportunity to organize regional dialogue and imagine a collective security framework. The Barcelona Declaration then proposed three different baskets for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, trying at the same time to deal with developmental and social issues and hard security matters. The EMP gradually consolidated as a socialization framework that was supposed to raise the level of mutual trust, encouraging both the formation of a common culture of security and the concrete adoption of confidence-building measures.

Ten years later, these high expectations might appear slightly utopian. The difficulties of building a collective security system were clearly exemplified by the shortcomings of the first basket of the EMP, "Political and Security Partnership", in its explicit objective of "Establishing a Common Area of Peace and Stability".

Indeed, the base line of the Euro-Med dialogue in security and defense matters has to be the common denominator agreed by all partners. The persistence of conflicts between some of the partners, combined with the political weaknesses of institutions in charge of organizing the dialogue, rapidly hindered the progression of the debate on security issues. The discussion over CBMs was soon interrupted, and the repeated attempts to adopt a Euro-Mediterranean Charter for Peace and Stability never met success. This failure is partly due to the rapid degradation of the Israel-Arab relationship after the partial implementation of the Oslo agreements. The resumption of Israeli colonization in the West Bank in 1997 effectively coincided with a general slowdown in the Barcelona process.

These setbacks seem to have been quickly acknowledged by partners on both sides. As a result, the background stabilization task of the EMP was increasingly supported by its economic basket, with mitigated success. It was not until 2001 that the interest for possible security arrangements was revived, after the 9/11 events rattled the partnership's fragile political construction.

In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction have become permanent security concerns for most of the European Union member states. These European worries encounter a growing preoccupation of some Southern Mediterranean regimes that face the possibility of internal destabilization. At the same time, the growing American presence in the Middle East also impels all regional stakeholders to react on the security front.

What can be observed now is a partial reorientation of the EMP on security matters, in a more pragmatic style. The partners now tend to seek short-term solutions in order to counter the most obvious threats, and new areas to test enhanced cooperation, possibly at a sub-regional or bilateral level. A rapprochement has been under way for about two years in some domains, including mainly the fight against terrorism and organized crime, informing southern countries on the conception and implementation of European Security and Defense Policy, and cooperation in civil protection and disaster management. The use of the EMP framework to support European efforts against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has also been recently evoked.

This new obsession with security casts its shadow over the partnership's political perspectives. The prominent political objective of the Barcelona process, namely the expansion of democratic reforms, might be temporarily sacrificed for the sake of security interests. The Europeans have not solved this ambiguity yet, as they do not seem to have agreed on a new vision for the region's future. For their part, the southern partners have essentially agreed to play the partnership game in order to re-balance the strategic landscape that has been significantly altered by American activism over the past two years.

The Barcelona process still stands as a unique framework for dialogue between the two shores of the Mediterranean. All EU member states are now convinced that security in Europe is indivisible from security in the Mediterranean. Yet stronger political input from the Europeans is certainly needed on a few crucial issues, in order to cope with regional security threats in the long term. Encouraging an overall settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors certainly remains the number one task to be undertaken in this respect.- Published 24/11/2005 © bitterlemons-international.org

Dorothee Schmid is a researcher on Mediterranean/Middle Eastern issues and European policies regarding them at Ifri (Institut français des relations internationales, Paris).