EFPU roundtable: ‘EU Foreign Policy: The view from the Mediterranean’

On 19 January 2012 the LSE’s European Foreign Policy Unit hosted the third roundtable on ‘EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon’, entitled ‘EU Foreign Policy: The View from the Mediterranean’. The panellists were Professor Atila Eralp (Middle East Technical University, Ankara), Professor Richard Gillespie (University of Liverpool) and Dr Claire Spencer (Chatham House). The roundtable was chaired by Professor Karen E. Smith of the LSE

EFPU roundtable: ‘Influencing the EU foreign policy process’

In a world where the presence of non-state actors (e.g. multinational corporations, NGOs, international organisations, etc.) has increased exponentially, it has become a burning issue to investigate the influence that they have on the EU. While much ink has been spilled analysing lobbying and advocacy activities in several EU policy areas, EU foreign policy, meaning all EU external relations, has not received particular attention

EFPU: EU foreign policy after Lisbon: The view from Asia

On 1 May 2012 the LSE’s European Foreign Policy Unit hosted the eighth of ten roundtables on ‘EU Foreign Policy after Lisbon’, entitled ‘The View from Asia’. The panellists were Professor Martin Holland (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), Dr Yeo Lay Hwee (EU Centre, Singapore), and Dr Michito Tsuruoka (National Institute for Defence Studies, Japan). The event was moderated by Dr Spyros Economides of the LSE

The EU and Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab uprisings:A story of selective engagement

This article argues that the new EU’s selective engagement with Islamist parties in its Southern neighbourhood following the Arab uprisings is the result of a partial shift in the EU’s frame used to understand political Islam, combined with a form of pragmatism that puts a premium on finding interlocutors in the region. Using the case studies of Tunisia and Egypt, it shows that the EU has replaced its previous monolithic conception of political Islam with an understanding that is more sensitive to differences among Islamists. This opens the door to some forms of engagement with those actors that renounce violence and demonstrate their commitment to work within the confines of democratic rules, while violent strands of political Islam and conservative groups remain at arm’s length

The EU's engagement with 'moderate' political Islam: the case of Ennahda

This paper focuses on the European Union’s engagement – or lack thereof – with Islamist political parties in North Africa following the Arab uprisings. By delving into the case of Tunisia’s Ennahda, it shows that the party’s growing moderation trajectory has been matched by a greater pragmatic engagement by the EU during the period 2011–16. It is argued that this new trend is explained by a partial shift in the frames that the EU employs to interpret ongoing changes in the Middle East and North Africa region as well as its interests and potential role in the region

Lobbying in EU foreign policy-making towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: exploring the potential of a constructivist perspective

This thesis explores how constructivist insights could help us to form a more complete picture of lobbying in EU foreign policy-making, with a special emphasis on EU foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It demonstrates that non-state actors (NSAs) such as business groups, NGOs, solidarity movements and think tanks, are important players in the EU’s foreign policy-making. By sharing the constructivist views on the embeddedness of actors and assuming that actors interact with each other in order to make sense of the world, this thesis investigates lobbying on the basis of three analytical dimensions; namely roles, frames and levels. It is shown that NSAs lobbying the EU play a consensual role, which is based on mutually legitimising social interactions that do not challenge the EU’s actorness and policies towards Israel and Palestine. When combined with the use of legal or technical frames, these consensual forms of interaction are conducive to a re-framing of EU policies towards Israel and Palestine. In contrast, confrontational forms of social interactions, combined with the use of political frames are more recurrent at the national level. Finally, this thesis analyses how the national level is used, when NSAs lobby the EU. It concludes that there is a partial Europeanization of lobbying carried out by NSAs based in member states. The EU and national levels tend, however, to remain quite disentangled from each other. The argument presented in this thesis is tested in three case studies (EU-Israel trade relations, the UN Report following the war in Gaza in 2008-2009 and the EU-Israel Agreement on pharmaceutical products), which represent important aspects of EU foreign policy and were frequently mentioned by NSAs and officials. Moreover, the national level is analysed in the cases of France, the United Kingdom and Germany, which are the three big member states of the EU and crucial players in EU foreign policy

The role of non-state actors in EU policies towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been on the European Union’s agenda for decades, becoming one of the most important and controversial issues of EU foreign policy. Member States and EU institutions are certainly the main actors involved in the EU’s policy-making process towards the conflict. However, non-state actors (NSAs), such as business groups, NGOs, think tanks etc., have also become part and parcel of the process. Not only are they involved in the output side of EU external policy-making, as beneficiaries of EU funding or in implementing EU projects, but they are also very active on the input side, thus contributing to the formulation and shaping of EU external policy in this regard. In light of the lobbying and advocacy activities carried out by NSAs when it comes to EU policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is important to investigate who these actors are and what role they play. In order to shed light on these aspects, the paper firstly presents a mapping of the NSAs involved in lobbying and advocacy activities in the context of EU policy. By offering a typology of these actors, it provides a lens through which the role of NSAs may be evaluated, highlighting their main features and core trends in their work. Secondly, the paper investigates the role played by these NSAs in the EU’s external policy-making process by offering examples of EU-NSA engagement. It demonstrates the key role played by NSAs in providing EU officials and policy-makers with information, raising awareness, drawing attention to events happening on the ground or having a bearing on the relationships between the EU and the parties, and offering different frames of analysis for problems and issues of EU interest. Moreover, NSAs can also contribute to fine-tuning existing EU policies towards the conflict, and indeed to changing them. By exploring these dynamics and the role played by NSAs, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the EU’s foreign policy-making process through the analysis of a group of actors that, although under-researched, play a not insignificant role in the formulation and evolution of EU external policy

Europe, the Green Line and the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian border: closing the gap between discourse and practice?

The article analyses how the Europeans (meaning European states and the EC/EU) have progressively turned a discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian border into a foreign policy practice. While much of the literature highlights the existence of a 'gap between discourse and practice' when it comes to Europeans’ foreign policy stance towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, we argue that the gap is dynamic and has changed across time. In the absence of an internationally and locally recognised border between Israel and Palestine, the Europeans have aimed at constructing one on the 1949 armistice line, the so-called Green Line. They have done so in stages, by first formulating a discursive practice about the need for a border, then establishing economic practices in the late 1980s-early 1990s, and most recently practicing a legal frame of reference for relations with Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) based on the Green Line. The outcome is that, for what concerns European countries and EU legislation, the Green Line has been increasingly taken as the Israeli-Palestinian border. However, gaps never fully close and more contemporary events seem in fact to point to a re-opening of the gap, as the article explores

Security and stability reframed, selective engagement maintained? The EU in the Mediterranean after the Arab uprisings

This conclusion provides a comparative survey of the main findings of this special issue and suggests avenues for further research. It shows that the security–stability nexus through which the EU approaches the Southern Mediterranean has experienced some measure of reframing in the wake of the Arab uprisings. While leading the EU towards a more inclusive approach, this partial frame redefinition has on the whole translated into forms of highly selective engagement. This conclusion suggests that this mismatch between the change in frame definition and its enactment in different policy areas can be accounted for with reference to four factors: institutional sources of policy rigidity, time lag, issue politicization and the willingness of Mediterranean partners to engage with the EU