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Partnership‐building in the MediterraneanClaire Spencer aa Head of the Mediterranean Security Programme, Centre for Defence Studies , King's College,University of Londonb Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Euro‐Mediterranean Studies , University of ReadingPublished online: 29 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Claire Spencer (1999) Partnership‐building in the Mediterranean, The International Spectator: ItalianJournal of International Affairs, 34:4, 59-74, DOI: 10.1080/03932729908456889

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THE INTERNATIONAL SPECTATORVOLUME XXXIV, No. 4, October - December 1999

Partnership-building in theMediterranean

Claire Spencer

Claire Spencer is Head of the MediterraneanSecurity Programme, Centre for Defence Studies,King's College, University of London, and VisitingResearch Fellow, Centre for Euro-MediterraneanStudies, University of Reading.1

The building of confidence is a complex process. In essence, it is based on ensur-ing that the right combination of psychological elements (above all trust and pre-dictability) are articulated through the most appropriate instruments in a contextconducive to the gradual development of realisable and verifiable goals over time.Because nothing can be achieved overnight (hence the notion of "process") the-shared goals of those who are party to the process have to identified and built in tothe process from the start. These goals may need to be revised (and even re-newed or reoriented) at opportune moments. Likewise, what may have seemed anappropriate set of instruments to meet a set of defined ends in one set of circum-stances may require a re-assessment in another, or be expressly redesigned to fitthe potentially shifting goals of the participants. The larger context within whichthe process is situated may also change over time, and in fact - given the inelucta-ble march of history - is unlikely to remain stable or in the same place as when theoriginal process was started.

The task currently facing the drafters of the Euro-Mediterranean Charter forPeace and Stability encompasses all of these difficulties or challenges, yet theyare not always made explicit. The vocabulary of partnership or confidence-building does not directly address shared goals (such as "mutual threat reduc-tion") because the Mediterranean remains a loose and fluid framework for securitycooperation. Shared goals are hard to define, ironically, because of the absence

1 This article has been generated within the EuroMeSCo Working Group on the Euro-Med Charter forPeace and Stability and been made possible by funding from the Commission of the EuropeanCommunities. The views expressed herein are those of the beneficiary and in no way reflect the offi-cial opinion of the Commission.

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of regionwide conflict, as well as the breadth of the areas covered by the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) initiative as a whole. At the same time, this ab-sence of conflict (which does not apply so cogently at the sub-regional level) hasoffered considerable opportunities to the EMP to make innovative strides towardsnew forms of security cooperation. Since its inception in 1995, the EMP has beenslow to realise its potential, above all in translating into practice policy objectivesformulated in theory. The lack of a clear sense of prioritisation between the objec-tives set out in the EMP's founding document, the Barcelona Declaration of No-vember 1995, has also relativised the importance of security goals in, for example,the realisation of economic or trade policy objectives.

This is not a problem which is unique to the EMP, as this article will argue, butto the formulation of cross-sectoral policy in the articulation and practice of theEll's foreign and security policy as a whole. If officials in Europe's foreign minis-tries and the European Commission charged with coordinating the different as-pects of Europe's external relations identify economic factors as being at the coreof a given region's tensions, it does not necessarily mean that they themselveshave any direct influence on the kind of economic policy which might alleviatethese tensions.. In turn, trade ministry officials are not always working to a briefwhich cites the promotion of security as a key priority. Even officials working onarms control issues in ministries of defence, for example, may not be aware thatthe EMP is also engaged in this field, within a framework usually only articulated atthe highest (and as a result, most abstract) levels of policy coordination.

These are structural problems, at the national, as well as EU and inter-governmental level of European foreign policy-making which are only beginning tobe addressed.2 However, for the purposes of confidence-building in the Mediterra-nean, it means that the most elevated ambitions may almost inevitably fall victimto the practical difficulties associated with their application. These difficulties arealready apparent at the level of the EU's bilateral relations with individual southernpartners, as well as in coordinating resources within Europe to make an impact atthe regional level as a whole. It also means that in the absence of clear parametersand incentives for their realisation, the creation of more structured instruments,such as confidence-building measures (CBMs) or confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs), would appear to be premature.

This author has in fact argued elsewhere that the elaboration of CBMs andCSBMs for the Mediterranean region may even be detrimental to their intent insuggesting that the potential for conflict exists, or underlies the process.3 They

2 See J. Monar, "Institutional Constraints of the European Union's Mediterranean Policy", Mediterra-nean Politics, 1998, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 42-3. Monar describes how the limitations on national policycoordination outlined here are amplified by the "dualistic nature" of EU external policy formulation,external economic policy being the responsibility of the Commission and Council of Ministers, for-eign and security policy being conducted under the parallel (but functionally disconnected) inter-governmental strucures of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

3 C. Spencer, "Building Confidence in the Mediterranean", Meditenanean Politics, vol. 2, no. 2, 1997,

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may, however, have some utility where confrontational attitudes have character-ised sub-regional relations in the past, as in the case of Greece and Turkey, or be-tween the Arab states and Israel. Even here, however, clear guidelines for what isto be included in the confidence-building process is of the essence, as well as de-'sired end goals. For some of this work, however, frameworks already exist, suchas the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) working group associated withthe Middle East peace process, which may enjoy a revival in the new atmosphereof regional cooperation which has followed the change of government in Israel in1999. Any impact the EMP could have on such developments is likely to be indi-rect, rather than direct, and efforts might better be concentrated on less structuredapproaches to improving and strengthening regional relations across and withinthe Mediterranean.

In this respect, what continues to be required is greater mutual familiarisationwithin and between the various EMP partners, where even the apparently unitedEuropean (EU-15) bloc does not always share positions or priorities with the con-viction joint policy statements often seem to convey. To this end, the formulationof more modest and more open-ended partnership-building measures (PBMs), in-troduced in an exploratory fashion at the EMP Malta summit of 1997 are likely tobe more adept in the short run. Even if end results are limited, the very process ofincreasing transparency and, in many cases, making an honest admission of whatmay or may not be achievable holds the key to establishing the groundwork forbuilding confidence.

An elaboration of these observations will follow in a later section of this arti-cle. Before this, the argument will proceed by briefly considering how the contextfor the EMP has changed both internally and externally since its inception in 1995,with particular relevance to the constraints and limitations facing the more ambi-tious proposals for regional political and security cooperation envisaged within theEuro-Mediterranean Charter. This will be followed by a number of suggestions forthe type of measure or approach which might be adopted to lay the groundwork forpromoting and maintaining confidence in the Mediterranean region into the nextcentury.

The changing security environment

The preparatory work for building confidence goes beyond the Mediterranean re-gion itself, where the linkages of the EMP to other security processes are still intheir infancy. External observers of the EMP follow-up process might be mistakenin - and even forgiven for - thinking that the venture has existed in almost totalsubstantive isolation from other contemporary developments in the sphere of se-curity relations in and around Europe.

Even where the Mediterranean is cited as an "area of special interest" in keysecurity fora such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the reasons

pp. 23-48.

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or particularities of this special interest are rarely spelt out in any detail. Even lessattention is given to the incentives or rationale for including designated partners.It is as if citing the need for a Mediterranean volet for Europe's security relationson its southern periphery has been sufficient to infuse life into what follows.4 Inturn, the "special interests" of southern (that is, non-NATO, non-EU) partners arealmost never encapsulated in a single place or set of policy directions, not leastbecause they have no equivalent security fora within which to express collectivepositions of a regional nature. Within the EMP, of course, there are self-evidentpolitical difficulties associated with the formation of any collective security posi-tion between partners as diverse as Israel and the Arab "bloc" and Turkey, half inthe "North" (through NATO membership) and half in the "South" (outside the EU).

One of the main goals of the EMP and its Charter has been to redress this im-balance, precisely by providing a mechanism or framework in which all partnerscan participate in defining a set of collective security goals across (North-South)as well as within (South-South) the Mediterranean region. According to the criteriaagreed at the Stuttgart EMP Foreign Ministers' Conference of April 1999, thesegoals are to be governed or ruled by the principle of consensus and are to includemeasures to which'all can feel comfortable in ascribing within a shared context ofthe indivisibility of security for all partners. This "indivisibility" essentially meansthat one partner's security should not prejudice another's, in the context of secu-rity being of a comprehensive character.5

That few such measures have emerged since 1995 should give its propo-nents pause for thought. Just as the EMP appears to be confirming its ambitiousterms of reference across a wide array of issues and sectors, the political and se-curity process has come under increasing pressure to produce results as it ap-proaches its fifth year. The largely unspoken fear is that the whole political andsecurity dimension of the EMP will run out of steam if it fails to elaborate on exist-ing initiatives soon. This growing urgency increases the temptation to skirt arounddifficult structural questions, even where it remains evident that the key underlyingimbalances of the process remain in place.6 Simultaneously, both the inner andexternal landscapes of the EMP have been shifting, fortunately not all in wayswhich constitute a negative influence on the future direction the Charter and its

4 For the sake of comparison, see the detailed arrangements already in existence in the Barents,Black Sea and Baltics regions, which although (or perhaps because?) smaller than the Mediterra-nean "groups" or partners assembled by NATO, the WEU and the EU, are considerably more ad-vanced. See A. Cottey (ed.) Subregional Cooperation in the New Europe: BuildingSecurity, Prosperity and Solidarity from the Barents to the Black Sea (London: MacMillan, 1999).

5 See "Guidelines for Elaborating a Euro-Med Charter for Peace and Stability", Annex Third Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Foreign Ministers (Stuttgart, 15-16 April 1999), Chairman's FormalConclusions.

6 At the risk of over-stressing the point, the core imbalance might be summarized as the military anddiplomatic prowess of the EMP's northern (EU-15) partners, organized across a number of inter-governmental frameworks (EU, NATO, WEU, OSCE), facing the comparatively atomized, nation-state based and non-collective security thinking and practice of the EMP's southern partners.

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instruments might take.The "inner" dimensions of the Barcelona process have always been linked, if

reluctantly at first, to the vicissitudes of the Middle East peace process. Followingthe change of government in Israel in 1999, and with it, the renewed framework fora settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the EMP may onceagain find a supportive role for security initiatives in the region. In the broader, "ex-ternal" landscape of security planning, however, what has yet to be fully recog-nised is the extent to which operational, as well as "architectural" or institutionaldevelopments in the wider European security arena have changed and will con-tinue to change the parameters within which the whole Mediterranean security de-bate takes place. The aftermath of the Kosovo operation of 1999, above all, willintrude on the next steps to be taken by the Barcelona process, for the simple rea-son that the EMP is itself posited on exploring new dimensions in Europe's secu-rity relations to the south of the EU area.

The hidden influence of Kosovo

The main impact of the Kosovo operation is that considerably more questions arebeing asked about applying the right instruments at the right time and in the rightplaces than four years ago, when the very notions of "peace enforcement" orpeace support operations (at least under direct NATO auspices) were still consid-ered daring. The EU is now seeking to consolidate for itself a "capacity for autono-mous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to usethem, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises withoutprejudice to NATO".5 This affirmation of a fully-fledged security and defence ca-pacity does not, however, mean that the EU is yet in a position to make much im-pact in this sphere.

One of the largely unacknowledged weaknesses of the inclusion of traditionalsecurity mechanisms under the EMP is that both at the time of the Barcelona Dec-laration and subsequently, the EU has been less than comfortable with engagingdirectly with military and defence agendas. This is a function partly of the predomi-nance of NATO for most European states in the diplomatic as well as military as-pects of defence and security policy-making, and to a lesser extent, of theshortcomings of the WEU. It is also a reflection of the fact that, defence coopera-tion has been the least developed area of the EU's Common Foreign and SecurityPolicy (CFSP). In contrast, where the EU has enjoyed most coherence and collec-tive experience - namely, in external economic, financial and trade cooperationpolicy - the second chapter of the Barcelona Declaration, which deals at lengthwith these issues, makes no explicit reference at all to security. The wording of thepreamble, rather than the content of the Declaration, has been deemed sufficientto posit this objective.

5 "European Council Declaration", Annex III of Presidency Conclusions, Cologne Council, 3/4 June1999, Article 1.

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The time for considering the security implications of economic policy may bepremature, where the inverse, namely, the economic implications of (and for) se-curity policy is still the preferred approach. Nevertheless, calls for more integratedapproaches to security planning have been increasing. Indeed, it was NATO Sec-retary General Javier Solana who appealed in early 1999 for a "Partnership forProsperity" for the Balkans,6 in acknowledgement of a broader set of causal fac-tors than the frequently cited ethnic tensions for conflict in the region. Genuine at-tempts to coordinate economic, social, political and diplomatic objectives acrossthe board are still in their infancy, although, at the conceptual level, the Barcelonaprocess might be considered a pioneering venture in the field. In the short run,however, the EMP will continue to be limited in its reach by its status as a pre-emptive expression of the CFSP. Until the CFSP is adapted to new circumstances,the main significance of this for the EMP is that its European partners will be un-able to forestall what has yet to be decided amongst them within the EU, as well asbetween the EU and other security regimes represented primarily by NATO andthe WEU.

The form that some of these inter-relationships may take is already at theplanning stage. At the Cologne European Council meeting of June 1999, influ-enced by developments at the St. Malo meeting between the British and Frenchprime ministers during the autumn of 1998, the General Affairs Council of the EUwas charged with formulating proposals for the "inclusion of those functions of theWEU which will be necessary for the EU to fulfil its new responsibilities in the areaof the Petersberg tasks", with a view to taking the "necessary decisions" by theend of the year 2000. The WEU would then "as an organisation . . . have completedits purpose", its operational capabilities having been subsumed under an EUdecision-making umbrella.7 This still leaves the area of EU-NATO cooperationlargely untouched, except insofar as the EU's desire to increase "effective mutualconsultation, cooperation and transparency" between the two organisations isconcerned. It is perhaps a coincidence that pursuant to the Amsterdam Treaty, thenewly appointed Secretary General of the European Council and High Represen-tative for the CFSP is in fact the erstwhile NATO Secretary General Solana, butthe conundrum of where the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) withinNATO meets the CFSP of the EU still requires further clarification and fine-tuning.

In this respect, the future relationship between the United States and the EUin the European arena will constitute the central issue of "hard" (military/defence)security coordination, above all over the thorny question of burden-sharing. TheUS presence in the Mediterranean, linked as it is to American security objectivesin the broader Middle East, will continue to impinge on Europe's - above all, theEU's - ability to articulate an independent role in formulating traditional defence

6 J. Solana, "NATO's New Roles and Missions" (Speech to the Royal United Services Institute, Lon-don, March 1999: http://www.nato.org.int...)

7 See European Council Declaration, Annex III, Article 5.

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mechanisms (including CBMs and CSBMs). This is not least because the inclusionof the US in most arms control regimes as well as in the provision of security guar-antees to its allies (Middle Eastern as well as European) will remain a sine quanon of their success or failure.

The debate in the second half of 1999 is still open-ended and concentratedmostly on the implications for future operations. At the core of these discussions,however, are the key military and defensive functions of security policy, which be-cause implicit to the conceptualisation of most security questions, are often thehardest to move away from. This presents a challenge to the EU's initiatives in thefield since, as mentioned above, defence is one of the areas least defined andleast developed within the CFSP. Defence and military cooperation is also likely tobe the area most subject to critical thinking in the aftermath of Kosovo, with poten-tial impacts on the new parameters set for the EU's external relations in general.

The Kosovo campaign has in fact changed the nature of Europe's security"architecture" and institutions from alliances prepared for defensive and peace-keeping actions towards more pro-active methods to secure their joint aims. Jointplanning has moved into the sphere of joint operations. The fall-out from this, es-pecially in assessments of the future applicability of "humanitarian actions",means that some coherence is indeed, slowly, entering the field of defence and se-curity cooperation within Europe. At the national level in the UK, for example, theDepartment for International Development (DfID) has already been strengtheningpolicy coordination and operational links with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) inways which may find echoes across Europe. However, it may be some time beforethis kind of cross-ministerial coordination trickles down to the Mediterranean.

This opens a renewed opportunity for the EMP to contribute to the debate, es-pecially in highlighting areas where, for example, economic, social and culturalroutes to security cooperation are more appropriate to the envisaged outcomesthan traditional forms of security cooperation. The new administrative anddecision-making capacities envisaged for external security and defence policy co-ordination in the post-Amsterdam Europe may also create opportunities for theEMP to become more accessible to its non-European partners as well as morestreamlined than is currently the case.

Given the pertinence of this dislocation to hindering the objectives of theEMP, the projected reforms of the EU's institutions, and above all the Commis-sion, due to be outlined by the newly appointed President of the Commission inearly 2000, could also benefit from the input of some of the EMP's experienceover the past five years. One immediate conclusion drawn by many observers ofthe EMP is that the Commission is understaffed to the point of being unequal to thetask of fully addressing the array of tasks facing it, before one even considers thecapacities of southern partners. Both might benefit from a greater devolution tothe region of the management and implementation of policy, as well as, more con-troversially, an increase in non-governmental (or "civil society") involvement inthis process.

One immediate area in which the EMP's European partners might engage to C=J65

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build confidence will be in reassuring their southern neighbours about the futurepotential for "pro-active" defence or humanitarian operations to be launched onEurope's borders. For those to the south of the Mediterranean, the Kosovo cam-paign of 1999 has undoubtedly raised a number of apprehensions, especiallyamong those routinely questioned about their human rights records. It was the first.NATO operation explicitly to override the principle of sovereign inviolability in fa-vour of humanitarian objectives. For many Europeans, this has been a cause forcelebration in extending the boundaries of international humanitarian law towardsthe active protection of human rights. It has also raised a series of questions aboutwhere and how far this precedent will reach. While the future of Kosovo remains tobe definitively settled, and the political and economic costs of the conflict andpost-conflict reconstruction effort remain to be counted, repetitions of this opera-tion further afield are extremely unlikely. As a means of encouraging human rightsreform, however, the EU might be better placed to replace the Kosovo examplewith clearer non-military incentives for change and improvement on its southernborders.

The way forward:Partnership-Building Measures (PBMs) and the Charter

It is clear from the arguments advanced so far that the multifaceted ambitions ofthe EMP cannot be realised in the short term, not least because they are depend-ent on developments elsewhere. These are taking place, primarily and'simultane-ously, within the EU itself, but also within the transatlantic dimensions of Europe'soverall security policy coordination.

Rather than pre-empt or predict the outcomes of these shifts and develop-ments, the Charter might reflect this context by trimming its wings and current am-bitions, the better to incorporate future measures of the CBM variety when - andeven if - the time is ripe. Limiting the initial parameters (and envisaged instru-ments) of the Charter does not necessarily mean, however, that the EMP shouldlose any of its potential dynamism. In fact, the holistic vision of the EMP presentsgovernments with a formidable challenge as well as an opportunity to coordinatepolicy across a number of spheres which have hitherto not been well integrated inexpressions of their foreign policy in general.

Here too, the challenge is larger than the EMP process itself, reaching intospheres of domestic policy coordination under the direct and sole responsibility ofindividual governments. Communication across ministries, the assimilation andintegration of (occasionally conflicting) policy objectives at the appropriate level,their translation into coherent policy at the local̂ and national levels, and their cohe-sion through compromise at the EU intergovernmental level constitute a series ofbureaucratic, human and technological hurdles facing all EU states on a daily basis.However, as the instigators of the EMP, EU governments might, as a priority, focuson how and through what channels they can best articulate the goals of the EMPfrom the domestic level upwards, in order to identify areas for special attention.

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The "Guidelines" for elaborating the Charter reflect some of this thinking,where the main objective is to "contribute, through a comprehensive and balancedapproach, to the strengthening of peace and stability".8 Further elaboration alsoconcentrates on evolving a "coherent" approach to the primary objectives of theBarcelona Declaration, across all three of its chapters. Given that the EU enjoysmore leeway for initiating or supporting policy in the economic and financial, hu-man and social dimensions of the Barcelona process, the starting point might bestbe found in these areas. Put another way, this means concentrating primarily ondeveloping policies with positive "soft" (non-military) security outcomes. Onlywhen a firm basis for cooperation has been established in these areas should theEU venture into "hard" or substantive diplomatic security approaches.

Because they are politically sensitive, and deemed by most southern partnersto be potentially "intrusive", hard security instruments will inevitably be more diffi-cult to devise. Even if only some of the partners are engaged in a process of con-flict resolution, for example, the principles which govern any type of engagementunder the EMP will require the consensus of all 27 (or 28, as and when Libya joins)members of the EMP.9 The compromises required to achieve this 27 (28) partyconsensus are unlikely to produce instruments with much flexibility, effectivenessor even utility, particularly given other alternatives, such as appeals to the UnitedNations, to the United States (as global and regional arbiter) or to internationallaw. This, in effect, has been the story of the political and security dimensions ofthe Barcelona process since 1995.

What follows are some broadly depicted suggestions and recommendationsfor the kind of "partnership building" in which the EMP might most fruitfully en-gage, and which might be included in some form in the future Charter or in its workprogramme follow-up. Some of the measures put forward might be too unstruc-tured or open-ended to warrant the label PBM; as a term, however, PBM was spe-cifically introduced to substitute for the more structured, and historically loadedconnotations associated with CBMs and CSBMs. The further development ofPBMs thus presents another, dual-sided, opportunity to EMP negotiators: not onlyto reorient security thinking and practice away from its traditional basis in as-sumed conflicts and underlying defence planning, but also to create instrumentswhich reflect a more global shift away from a world of "hard" security responses atthe eleventh hour to the more grey-tinged but pre-emptive possibilities of inter-related "soft" security objectives and mechanisms.

Trading "hard" for "soft" security priorities

PBMs should concentrate first and foremost on increasing mutual famil iar i ty and

8 "Guidelines for Elaborating Euro-Med Charter", Objectives (a).9 This, at least, appears to be the implication under the "Guidelines", which allow partners to engage

in preventive diplomacy, crisis management measures and post-conflict rehabilitation "on a volun-tary and consensual basis in the framework of the Euro-Med Partnership" (emphasis added).

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understanding across and within the Mediterranean region. The clear priority - orleitmotiv - of the Charter should be to expand the still fragile basis on which re-gional cooperation is currently posited, in preference to activities predicated onjoint, or sub-regional planning for conflict prevention and crisis management. Thelatter should assume a secondary level of importance, applicable only - as thewording of the Charter Guidelines already indicates - on a "voluntary and consen-sual basis".

Concentrating the EMP's energies on positive outcomes through constructiveengagement would serve the dual purpose of establishing a stronger frameworkfor cooperation in its widest sense (that is, not just over security issues, tradition-ally defined, but across the whole spectrum of the EMP) while pre-empting pre-cisely the kind of mistrust and mutual threat perceptions which, for want of otherchannels, may eventually give rise to conflict.

Conversely, the vocabulary of conflict prevention and crisis managementshould be used with great circumspection. Contrary to intentions, and in the ab-sence of any capacity or willingness within the EMP to address existing conflicts,the very use of this vocabulary at this stage of the EMP's development serves onlyto reinforce the idea (prevalent among many security analysts) that belligerenttensions are latent to inter-state relations within the Mediterranean region. Most ofthe region's problems, regrettably, arise at the internal or domestic level, and it ishere, rather than at the inter-state level that polices to protect human lives shouldbe developed.

Crisis management should, as a result, concentrate more on joint venturesgeared towards shared humanitarian and social goals, than on mutual dispute set-tlement. One approach, which might be developed further as a PBM, is an exten-sion of the 2-year pilot project for cooperation between civil protection serviceslaunched operationally in June 1998. Could this project, under EMP auspices,have had a role to play in the Turkish and Greek earthquake disasters of the latesummer of 1999, for example? Or are governments, in cases of sudden emergen-cies, still more likely to offer aid and assistance on a bilateral, government-to-government basis? Explorations by the EMP in this direction could be productive,not least because they respond to real rather than imagined needs. Developingearly warning systems for natural disasters of the kind already foreseen in thecase of the Turkish and Greek earthquakes, along with contingency plans andunits ready to react at short notice, may not only increase the viability of joint re-sponses, but also serve to promote the continuing benefits of exchanging expertadvice and technical assistance across a number of sectors within EMP partnerstates.

The concentration of EMP's energies on the human and social consequencesof natural disasters could result in less duplication of efforts elsewhere. The wholesphere of arms control issues could, as a result, be addressed in novel ways. Thepolitical dialogue could, for example, concentrate on incentives towards allocatingdefence budgets to more humanitarian ends, along the lines ostensibly being

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followed in Europe. To borrow from the suggestions of Captain Stephen Jermy,drawing on instruments already available under the Maritime Doctrine of the Brit-ish Royal Navy:

A number of generic activities spring to mind.ThefirstisMilitaryAidtotheCivil Community (MACC), encompassing the use of military forces innon-military tasks such as disaster relief, search and rescue, salvage andpollution control. Second is Military Aid to the Civil Power (MACP),encompassing the use of military forces in non-military tasks such asfisheries protection, anti-smuggling and anti-piracy. This will be of specialrelevance where international norms are being enforced. Finally, ArmsControl has socio-economic relevance in this division through reduction indefence expenditure freeing up resources for other security sectors, inareas such as social and environmental programmes.10

A more structured role than this for the EMP's European partners in the de-tailed promotion of arms control regimes is not only premature, but largely inap-propriate, given the EMP's subsidiary position to the monitoring, verification andcompliance mechanisms evolved and exercised by EU governments in other inter-national fora. This is not to say however that, consistent with its holistic vision, theEU should not make the appropriate connections and balance of objectives be-tween arms sales to the Mediterranean region (often competitively promoted byministries of trade and defence within individual EU states) and the goals of armscontrol and reduction (pursued by the same ministries of defence and then collec-tively by the EU as a whole). Inconsistencies in respect of these often competingobjectives - especially over the retention of nuclear arsenals by France and theUK- have and will continue to bedevil attempts to persuade or enforce complianceon international arms agreements with southern Mediterranean states.

Human partnerships

The harsh reality facing European governments is that a large number of the ex-pectations raised by Barcelona have been disappointed by delays in the imple-mentation of projects. These have been caused in large measure by the lateallocation and initial disbursement of the MEDA funding line, and the suspensionof a number of agreed project funds in 1998-99 pending the European Parlia-ment's investigations into the Commission's oversight over a number of fundinglines, including MEDA. This disappointment has not been universal, but adds tothe impression expressed in Morocco that the decision-making and disbursementprocedures for the MEDA funding are too distant and centralised to respond to lo-cal needs. The back-log of unfulfilled funding initiatives should thus be addressed

10 S. Jermy, "Mediterranean Security, the Maghreb and Europe - an opportunity for Co-operative Se-curity measures?" (mimeo, autumn 1998); see also C. Echeverria, Cooperation in peacekeepingamong the Euro-Mediterranean armed forces, Chaillot Papers, no. 35, February 1999.

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by EU governments as a priority, not only as a gesture of good faith, but as apartnership-building measure in itself.

Activities associated with increasing mutual familiarisation across and withinthe Mediterranean region already exist; what is lacking is the ability of in-countryCommission representatives to respond swiftly and with flexibility to local initia-tives requiring small levels of funding at relatively short notice. At a time when cen-tralised funding lines in Brussels have not been immune from questions ofaccountability, reforms to increase transparency within the Commission could betailored to encompass delegated authority within the Mediterranean region.

One approach might also be to set up joint commissions composed of EU andin-country membership, not only to oversee small funding initiatives, but also tosustain a continuing two-way process of communication between the EU and indi-vidual southern partners over a variety of "partnership-building" issues. This dia-logue or exchange of views "on the ground" could also be fed into the work of themultilateral high officials' meetings on political and security issues.

More staff is required on the European side. The Commission cannot manageprojects under all three chapters of Barcelona at once, in ways which at one andthe same time are appropriate to the circumstances of individual southern EMPcountries, reflect the state of progress in bilateral association agreements, andcorrespond to the overall vision set forward in the Barcelona Declaration. Sincethe Barcelona Declaration incorporates a desire (under its third chapter) to in-crease links across civil societies, more thought might perhaps be given also to in-creasing non-governmental participation in the implementation of initiatives.

To date, non-governmental involvement in the political and security dimen-sions of the EMP has remained limited in scope and confined largely to an advi-sory role. This could now be explicitly extended to exploring the cross-sectoraldimensions of security cooperation, perhaps through a series of designated casestudies to examine the successes and failures of coordinating "soft" security ob-jectives under the EMP to date. The utility of devolving this kind of task to "exter-nal" agents is, paradoxically, that non-governmental actors might be better placedthan officials engaged in specific areas to identify where connections are or arenot being made at national and local levels of policy-making, even before the EMPdimension comes into play. This is an area, too, where the EU's post-AmsterdamTreaty reforms might increase the participation of non-governmental regional andsecurity specialists in the EU's new strategic planning processes.

More explicit links might be made between the multilateral and purely bilat-eral policy initiatives embarked on by individual European partners. It is obvious,for example, that Spanish security concerns are more directly linked to those ofMorocco than to those of Jordan, if only for reasons of proximity. Where joint com-missions to manage shared security-related concerns have been set up at the bi-lateral level (over the renewal of the EU's fishing accords with Morocco, orbetween Spain and Morocco over migration, for instance), cooperative measureswhich might have general applicability elsewhere could be "pooled" at the EMP

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level. The aim would not be to divulge the potentially confidential nature of bilat-eral exchanges, but to demonstrate more clearly where sub-regional cooperationmay be more appropriate to addressing substantive issues than under the EMPumbrella. It would also, hopefully, reduce the duplication of efforts at several lev-els, especially if more thought were given to how these bilateral initiatives con-verge with (rather than diverge from) the EMP's overall objectives.

The "soft" security issues of most concern to the EU states are themselvesthe subject of a complex set of inter-governmental negotiations as well as agree-ments devised and implemented within the European acquis, under the auspicesof the European Parliament and the Commission. At the same time, the manage-ment of these issues - above all, migration and the policing and combating ofdrugs and organised crime - are all subject to political pressures and sensitivitiesat the national level of policy-making. These factors make the evolution of EU-level decision-making all the more complicated and subject to constant externalpressures. Not all EU member states are signatories of the Schengen Accordsaimed at harmonising refugee, asylum and visa policies across internal Europeanborders. Some rationalisation may nevertheless enter collective EU policy-makingin these areas., following the summit on EU-wide Justice and Home Affairs held inTampere in October 1999.

This complexity needs to be explained to Mediterranean partners in terms ofthe difficulties associated with building and sustaining common positions withinEurope. This would help to promote greater understanding among non-Europeanpartners of the factors which limit the coherent expression of EU external policypositions. At the same time, the input and views of southern Mediterranean part-ners require some functional responses within those areas of European policywhich directly impinge on their ability to fulfil their obligations under Barcelona.One of these is the swift and streamlined granting of visas to southern Mediterra-nean business delegations needing to visit Europe to market industrial goods andproducts or seek bilateral sources of investment for joint or new business ventures.

Migration policy. The whole arena of migration policy is, in fact, both the Achil-les heel and the "golden egg" of the EMP. It is the main issue - or set of issues -which finds its place within all three chapters of the Barcelona Declaration. Too of-ten, however, migration appears to be rooted in the minds of the EMP's Europeanpartners as a question of control rather than opportunity. What is now badlyneeded is more open discussion of the real dynamics of migration. Until now, pre-venting uncontrolled population movements across the Mediterranean has consti-tuted the core preoccupation of much of Europe's security planning, the maintaboo being even to consider re-opening the question of admitting legal migrants.Yet, as observers from the societies to the south of the Mediterranean often argue,conditions of illegality in fact encourage those who arrive in Europe to stay clan-destinely, for fear of retributions not only from European authorities but also fromtheir home authorities if they are forcibly returned. Furthermore, a closed-door ap-proach to new migration also discourages exchanges between the "best" of the so-

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cieties on either side of the Mediterranean, since the most qualified migrants arelikely to leave for North America or elsewhere. This leaves the unemployed andunqualified to smuggle themselves and others into Europe, creating a situationwhich, at best, does little to promote cross-cultural understanding and, at worst,perpetuates negative mutual impressions.

This discussion presupposes that migration is a fact of life, of historical aswell as contemporary importance which cannot be contained except at great costto the interior ministries, coast guards and navies of "fortress Europe". More en-lightened policies - such as youth and student exchanges under reciprocally man-aged arrangements, with in-built incentives to return home - might at least beopen to discussion under the EMP umbrella, not least to dispel the impression rifewithin southern EMP societies that "only inanimate objects are welcome inEurope". Disaggregating different aspects of population movements, such as visapolicies, temporary or permanent migration, asylum seekers and - more impor-tantly - the control of terrorism, would also go some way towards limiting the secu-rity dimensions of these issues to their proper size. This can only be achieved byfirst broaching the subject at the level of national governments, where progress islikely to be slow. However, the EMP might well play a significant role in introducingsouthern Mediterranean views to these debates, in ways which contribute to rein-forcing the sense of partnership in addressing and managing these quintessen-tially human issues.

Human rights policy. Another area where more imagination is required is in re-inforcing cooperation within the EMP over human rights issues. This is clearly asphere where the European partners appear to be the instigators of policy and thesouthern Mediterranean governments the reluctant consumers. This is not to saythat all or even most EMP partners are insensible to human rights concerns, northat European states themselves are entirely innocent of human rights violations.It is merely to state that the mechanisms and policies required to make progress inthis area do not clearly pertain to the EMP sphere. The most significant improve-ments in respect of human rights to the south of the Mediterranean have occurredwhere individual governments, local human rights organisations or internationalNGOs (such as Human Rights Watch, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Net-work or Amnesty International) have highlighted the plights of individuals andcommunities. Their cases have then been taken up at the bilateral level betweenindividual European governments or European presidency delegations and thegovernments of the states in question. In contrast, the discussion of human rightsunder the Barcelona umbrella, at a general and unsbecific level, is unlikely to beable to proceed beyond current initiatives - now largely completed - to list interna-tional human rights instruments and undertakings adhered to by all parties to theEMP.

An alternative approach and one already subscribed to under MEDA Democ-racy as well as the Stuttgart Chairman's Conclusions is to concentrate the

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multilateral focus of the EMP on the promotion of the rule of law. This is above allbecause the creation of a legal framework is a precondition for ensuring the rightsof citizens, including their rights to due process through independent courts. Aconcentration on the rule of law, as a precursor to democracy, could also serve topromote the effective separation of powers within existing governments, as well assubmitting the region's militaries to a form of civil, if not yet democratic, scrutiny.The rule of law also features in all chapters of the Barcelona Declaration, but is ofkey relevance in the economic and financial dimensions of cooperation. GeorgeJoffe has written cogently of the need for predictability under the rule.of law as aprecondition for encouraging and sustaining foreign direct investment in thesouthern Mediterranean.11

In this respect, there are clear incentives to be created based on financial andeconomic criteria, as well as linkages to be made across the chapters of Barce-lona. The principles of predictability and accountability might be cited as minimumrequirements for engagement at the EMP level, as well as forming a basis onwhich the provisions of the Charter are further elaborated. The corollary is that toemphasise too many unrealisable objectives at once - above all, democracy - is tolose sight of the core of the whole partnership-building initiative, which is to createa firm basis on which to make progress in other spheres on a steady and incre-mental basis.

Finally, no progress in human relations is ever possible without taking at leastsome risks. For the southern partners of the EMP, the risks involved in restructur-ing their economies to meet the challenge of the Mediterranean Free Trade Zonein the year 2010 are already apparent. The risks taken by European partners areless apparent, particularly to observers to the south of the Mediterranean. Thisview is not always shared by those in European security circles who predict direoutcomes if the EU's policies towards the Mediterranean fail, citing the combinedeffects of high demographic growth rates, widescale unemployment and massivemigration northwards. Far better, then, to take the small risk now of a managed ap-proach to migration and the building of confidence across societies, than face thepotentially unmanageable consequences of only limited contacts between thepeoples of the Euro-Mediterranean region.

Conclusion

The suggested policy directions outlined here are a long way from confidence-building measures as traditionally conceived. This is not least because there areas many dangers to be found in expectations raised, only to be disappointed, asthere are in ignoring the real sources of potential conflict in the Mediterranean re-gion. CBMs and CSBMs as instruments inherited and adapted from the Cold Warera run precisely this risk of structuring regional relations along lines which implythat there are underlying conflicts to be resolved, Not only does this potentially

11 G. Joffé (1997 EuroMeSCo paper, unpublished paper, mimeo).

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ignore what might be called the "psychological deficit" which governs many trans-Mediterranean relationships, but it also overlooks the most appropriate mecha-nisms - which may flourish precisely because unstructured and not labelled in anyparticular way - to overcoming mutual misunderstandings. The starting point, andconclusion, of the arguments posed here, is that the challenge is essentially one offinding a common language for security cooperation, within a context which re-flects the genuine interests, rather than the abstract desirability, of each party toengage in partnerships towards managing common, if initially limited, goals.

Because the EMP is a policy conceived and "offered" to southern partners bythe EU, even where the input of southern partners has shaped the final product orprocess, there are clearly strong material and political imbalances primarilyacross a North-South axis which prevent the realisation of genuinely balanced re-gional relations in the foreseeable future. However, this does not stand in the wayof identifying areas of complementarity and mutual interest in the management ofregional security questions.

This article has argued that it is time to return to the innovatory roots of theBarcelona process to build "a region of peace and stability" on the basis ofstronger economic, trade, social and human relations. Only then, and as ah exten-sion of the EU's growing competences in the field, should more traditional aspectsof security cooperation be brought under the EMP umbrella. The innovation of Bar-celona was precisely to make security a broader, more cross-sectoral and inte-grated set of issues than its traditional articulation within the spheres of militaryand defence cooperation. This is concisely summed up by Richard Youngs asfollows:

In designing the Barcelona process, the EU's philosophy was thateconomic and political objectives were symbiotic: economic reform wouldbring in its wake political reform, which would give a further boost toeconomic performance, the latter helping to stem any potential forunsustainable levels of migration and thereby enhancing securityobjectives.12

Returning to this basis now requires that security objectives be inherent andcentral to the realisation of economic objectives, rather than a fortuitous but sub-sidiary outcome. Reversing or revising this order of priorities is not an easy task.In many ways, however, it represents the real challenge facing reformers of theEU's foreign policy coordination, both beyond as well as within the Mediterraneanregion.

12 R. Youngs, 'The Barcelona Process after the UK Presidency: the Need for Prioritization", Mediterra-nean Politics, vol. 4, no. 1, 1999, pp. 17-8.

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