Re-thinking the EU's development paradigm: views from Morocco and Tunisia. EPC Policy Brief, 12 January 2015

A decade of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the standard model of business as usual remains. Is there a reluctance to take the prevailing development paradigm based on economic growth and question its suitability as a motor for development? Most ENP resources and most tangible results remain within a financial framework, with a concentration on market-driven reforms in relation to economic and social change. On this basis, the current atmosphere represents a historical opportunity for rethinking the EU´s development paradigm fostered in the region. Drawing on extensive field work in Morocco and Tunisia, this policy brief highlights limitations and contradictions of the EU´s socio-economic development policies

Reshaping Civil Society in Morocco: Boundary Setting, Integration and Consolidation. CEPS Working Document No. 323, December 2009

This paper looks at the dynamics affecting the development of civil society in Morocco within the context of the European Neighbourhood Policy. It explores cooperation mechanisms in three domains of civil society endeavour – women’s rights, human rights and socio-economic rights. In each area, the paper examines the kinds of mechanisms and opportunities emerging for the promotion of civil society, and which forms of action and stances taken by civil society have been encouraged (or otherwise). The paper contends that the development of civil society has triggered different responses by the state and international community. While civil and political rights have preoccupied domestic and international actors, socio-economic rights have long been absent from their agendas. Yet it is argued here that shifting responsibility for issues in the socio-economic domain to civil society is highly problematic under the current circumstances of state building, and poses risks of further ruptures in Moroccan society

Remaking Europe's Borders through the European Neighbourhood Policy. CEPS Working Document No. 327, March 2010

This Working Document explores the implications of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as an ambitious EU foreign policy for the development of a European political community. It suggests that the ENP can be viewed as an attempt to reconcile two potentially contradictory processes. The first – ‘border confirming’ – is about confirming border areas of demarcation and division, in which borders are conceived as boundary lines, frontier zones or barriers that protect the European Union and its citizens. The second – ‘border transcending’ – consists of a challenge to open EU borders and involves the transformation of the EU’s external boundaries into zones of interactions, opportunities and exchanges, with the emphasis on the transcendence of boundaries. To unpick some of the contradictions surrounding the highly contested phenomena of mobility in the neighbourhood, this paper analyses three bordering strategies: state borders, the imperial analogy and borders as networks. Each corresponds to different forms of territoriality and implies a different mode of control over the population

Decolonizing the spaces of European foreign policy: views from the Maghreb

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Mechanical Properties of Cellular Materials

Cellular materials have useful properties that allow wide range of applications like absorbers of kinetic energy, thermal isolation and so on. They appear in nature (for instance cork and wood) or they can be manufactured (polymers). Nowadays the importance of cellular media is higher because new technologies allow to foam metals and ceramics and also other kinds of manufacturing are developed. Consequently the class of solids from which cellular media are formed as well as variety of the shape of these solids are wider than before. Thus better methodologies that describe the properties of cellular media are needed and the ones that allow to obtain explicit analytical results of the set of parameters that may describe the properties are preferable. This thesis is concerned with mechanical properties of cellular media in linear as well as non-linear range. New methodologies that are based on general homogenization theories of highly heterogeneous composites. They simplify the computation using structural theories and at the same time generalize and correct the previously developed methodologies based on structural theories. The new methodologies in linear range allow to obtain (Often in explicit analytical form) effective constitutive constants of any specific cellular medium with periodic microstructure. For members of group of media with random microstructure of special kind (which covers main part of natural effectively isotropic media) they yield (close enough) specific bounds on these constants. New methodology was also developed for establishing of general bounds on these constants of wide classes of cellular media and some new upper bounds were proved. In non-linear range attention was focused on plastic behaviour of the basic material and its influence on the effective non-linear behavior of the cellular material. Specifically the effective yield surface was investigated, and an industrial application was computedAvailable from Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Servico de Informacao e Documentacao, Av. D. Carlos I, 126, 1200 Lisboa / FCT - Fundação para o Ciência e a TecnologiaSIGLEPTPortuga

T.H. Marshall at the Limit: Hiding out in Maas-Rhein Euregio

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