Barcelona Process

En ningún documento de la Edad Media encontramos referencia alguna sobre una supuesta confederación Catalano Aragonesa, ni a “Reyes de Cataluña-Aragón”, ni a “Condes-Reyes”.
Se trata de una construcción historiográfica de finales del siglo XIX que debe su origen a Antonio Bofarull (1821/1892). Historiador y poeta catalán que publicó en 1872 un libro de aire romántico con el título “Confederación Catalano Aragonesa”, en el que confería al Condado de Barcelona el mismo estatuto que al Reino de Aragón.

The EU foreign policy towards its southern neighbours in North Africa and Near East is pressured internally to deliver on security goals and normative values, while being challenged in the Mediterranean region.
Uprisings and instability brought forward during the Arab Spring, civil wars in the Middle East, massive migration and shared resources require European engagement towards its Arab and non-Arab Mediterranean neighbours, creating a loose framework composed by Member States’ diplomatic initiatives, bilateral and multilateral policies and international institutions. This mix tries to govern the relationship between the European Union and the Southern Neighbourhood, creating policy gaps, overlaps and potentially competing agendas.
Are the EU external policies towards the region consistent or clashing? Are the competing agendas of security, democracy and development, and diverging national interests detrimental to both the EU and the region? The handling of the Arab Spring and its aftermath is presented as a case study. The research question is analysed through the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean. The ENP has been put into context historically with the Barcelona Process antecedent and horizontally, by analysing challenges and complementary policies, such as Common Foreign and Security Policy, migration and intergovernmental multilateral cooperation.

"Respect for human rights and democratic principles have been regularly cited as an “essential element” of cooperation and relations between the European Union (EU) and non-EU countries in the Mediterranean. Since the 1990s onwards, numerous communications from the European Commission (EC) have stressed the need to integrate the so-called “essential-element” clause into the various agreements concluded with Mediterranean non-EU countries.

When concluding their association agreements with the European Union, Mediterranean countries agreed to respect the “essential-element” clause. When the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was introduced in 2004, the promotion of democracy and respect for human rights were presented as core values shaping the EU’s external action in non-EU countries.

Despite the clear objectives mentioned in the ENP action plans, and the numerous dialogues designed to raise awareness of the need for democratic reforms and human rights, the promotion of democracy in Mediterranean non-EU countries has been, by all accounts, the least effective chapter of Euro-Med cooperation.

This lack of commitment has been denounced by various human rights organizations and associations. Likewise, the European Commission (EC) recognized on various occasions its failure in promoting the observance of human rights. This essay investigates how “essential” the human rights component has been compared with the diverse priorities contained in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). It sets out to demonstrate that a subtle hierarchy of priorities has shaped EU policy options and perceptions making progress on human rights and democratization an issue of concern, but, at the same time, a dismissible priority in Euro-Mediterranean relations."

"This report was produced as part of the IEMed Survey
of Experts and Actors on the Euro-Mediterranean
Partnership. Its main aim is to take stock of the
developments and initiatives undertaken in the
framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership
since 2005, including the multilateral track of the
European Neighbourhood Policy and the more recent
Union for the Mediterranean, and provide the reader
with a reference guide for the content of the
Partnership.
The diversity of the Euro-Mediterranean process is
such that this review of Euro- Mediterranean activities
and projects is certainly not exhaustive, but at least
all major initiatives and developments are put together
in a single report, so that it can be useful as a “primer
for beginners” material. As the IEMed Survey of Experts
and Actors on the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership
shows clearly, many of the programmes and
instruments of the Partnership, in particular the most
recent and innovative ones, for instance in the
framework of the European Neighbourhood and
Partnership Instrument, are largely unknown even for
experts in this area, so the report can be useful as a
kind of quick reference thesaurus on the Euro-
Mewditerranean Partnership for actors and experts."

In this paper, I endeavor to show that Carl Schmitt's famous definition of nomos is crucial for a critical discussion of the political and ideological assumptions underlying the Barcelona process. The paper primarily deals with Schmitt's essay "Land und Meer" (1942), which precedes the more renowned "Der Nomos der Erde" (1950). In "Land und Meer," Schmitt offers an interpretation of geo-political history as a history of the conflict between land and sea. According to Schmitt, such history begins in the "sea surrounded by land," i.e. the Mediterranean. Schmitt considers European history as the result of conflicts between land and sea powers, i.e. between the Persians and the Greeks,  between Sparta and Athens, between Rome and Carthage, between the Byzantine Empire/Venice and the Turcs, and, in modern times, between the sea powers Spain/Portugal/England and the land powers France/Prussia (Germany). Nowadays, even if no conflicts are taking place at the heart of the EU, the Mediterranean is still the source of issues that menace Europe's political and economic stability. Hence the dilemma tackled in this paper: should Europe still look at its own "spatial nomos," i.e. the Mediterranean and its ensuing problems, or otherwise draw on an Atlantic nomos, and therefore stick to NATO and US policies? Is such an alternative viable or only empty rhetoric, given the economic and military relationships that bind European countries to the United States?

Spain’s EU Presidency poses major challenges for the country’s interests and strategic clout in the Mediterranean, in the new regional geopolitical context that has emerged in the wake of the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).

Summary: Above and beyond the developments in the disputes that are ongoing in the region, in which Spain has very limited scope for influence, Spain ‘is eagerly awaited’ and is expected to bring the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) back on track after two years of strong leadership –often to the extent of unilateralism– from France, and unprecedented political deadlock since the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was first launched in 1995. Spain’s prestige and strategic position in the region are at stake: if Spain confines its role to simply ‘managing’ the UfM during its term at the helm of the EU, without giving it a firm political boost based on specific proposals and initiatives, it will have let what is almost certainly a unique opportunity slip by. Its contribution could be more efficient in relation to institutional aspects or in defining and monitoring certain priority sector-specific strategies than in purely political-diplomatic matters

Turkey was a founding member of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, which soon developed closer links with the Union. The 1995 Customs Union Agreement was followed by the decision of the Helsinki EU Council Summit in December 1999, which gave Turkey the status of a candidate state. Thus, Turkey became exposed to stronger EU political influence and a different model of conditionality. In this paper, it will be argued that comparing the relative success of the European Union in promoting democratization in Turkey with the rather unsuccessful course of democratization reform in the MENA states can lead to useful conclusions on the EU policy in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.