The EU in the Middle East: from spectator to actor?

Sciences politiques | 8 pages | 05-03-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

With the recent election of Mahmud Abbas as chairman of the Palestinian Authority and Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza strip, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians appears to be at a crossroads, after years of severe strain on the so-called peace process. The two sides declared an end to all hostilities after a summit in February 2005, but the truce looks very fragile.

The European Union has recently supported Mahmud Abbas' candidacy and been more active in the region over the past few years. However, European interest for the conflict is not new: under the European Political Cooperation, from 1970 to 1987, around ninety declarations relating to the Mediterranean were adopted, the majority of which on the Arab-Israeli conflict . Since the regime of the European Political Cooperation, European policy towards the conflict has been relatively stable. The 1980 landmark Venice declaration indeed set the tone for future European policies. It stated that the treatment of the Palestinian people was more than a question of dealing with refugees, and pronounced itself in favour of Palestinian self-determination. Member states have also been constant in their defence of a secure Israel accepted by its neighbours. More than a decade after the declaration, the then European Community decided to proceed further in the field of political integration, and with the coming into force of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, the European Union established a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), in an attempt to respond to the challenges posed by the end of the Cold War, and to raise Europe's profile on the world's scene. The Middle East was soon to come on the CFSP's agenda, with a joint action adopted on the peace process in 1994, which reiterated the demand that the Arab boycott of Israel be lifted and offered EU financial assistance for the first Palestinian elections and for its new police force. As this example shows, the preferred EU tool for influencing the Palestinian Authority has been the carrot of financial aid, which has reached substantial levels. A comparable energy has been devoted to establishing ties of all sorts with Israel.

This essay will concentrate on the EU and the peace process during the CFSP years and try to analyse the role it played – or tried to play. Despite high expectations, a widespread sentiment among observers is that the EU has achieved little in terms of influence. Christopher Hill conceptualised this with the term of capabilities-expectations gap, as a gap between the ambitions or demands of the EU's international behaviour which derive from both outside and inside the Union, and the use of conventional instruments of foreign policy, which are more difficult for the EU to exert, due to its very own nature . This essay will argue that, despite growing commitment, the European Union has only had limited success when it comes to asserting itself as a mediator and influencing outcomes. This limited success is attributable to a number of factors, not least the complexity of the EU's institutional setting. However, the EU has framed a distinctive approach to the conflict, with soft power instruments that may be further enhanced: in a recent book, Michael E. Smith contends that to the extent that the EU increasingly integrates CFSP goals and actions with those of its first pillar (such as trade), which is for the author clearly taking place, its political influence abroad has great potential.

This essay will first examine the instruments used by the European Union for its action in the conflict, before trying to assess the actual influence on the conflicting parties and reflect on the reasons for the EU's limited success ...

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