On Distant Mediterranean Shores

The states of North Africa enjoy close economic relations with the EU as a result of association treaties. Unlike the accession states in the East, however, they have no say in the European Union. Bernhard Schmid reports

On 1 May of this year, membership of the European Union will grow to 25 states. And so it would appear that the "Common House of Europe" of which Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev liked to speak, is at last taking shape. For many, "the Common House of Europe" still means the exclusion of Turks, Moroccans and Egyptians. They are not civilised like we are. It goes without saying that for the foreseeable future, the greater part of the former Soviet Union will also be kept outside the gates of the burgeoning "new Europe".

Fear of a severing of economic ties

At the southern edge of the European continent, which begins on the other side of the Mediterranean, people are afraid that the economic ties that bind them to Europe will be severed even more than they already have been when the EU turns its attention to its new markets in the East, which will soon become part of the Common Market. "The South in the shadow of the East" was the title of a report on this subject from Dakar and Algiers published in the Paris daily Libération back in 1990.

It is worth remembering that in 1957, the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of today's EU, specifically referred to Algeria and Tunisia in an appended protocol to the Treaty of Rome, its founding document.

However, these countries were not treated in this document as subjects in their own right, but were instead defined through their privileged economic relations with EEC member France. At the time, Tunisia had not even been independent twelve months while Algeria was still French territory, albeit one that was racked by a war of independence.

Since the 1960s, the states on the southern shores of the Mediterranean - most of which had by that time gained their independence - have been pushing for closer economic ties to the EEC. In view of the fact that their economies were oriented towards the markets of the North while under colonial rule, they did not want to lose preferential access to these markets for their agricultural products.

Algeria was the only exception. On the one hand, Algeria had its own oil and on the other, until the end of the 1970s, it tried to make itself more independent of the European states by pursuing a policy of state socialist industrialisation.

In October 1972, the EEC summit in Paris agreed on a policy of concluding association treaties with the states of the southern and eastern Mediterranean. These treaties guarantee the free movement of goods for all industrial products and a series of agricultural products. Most of the industrial products are sold by the North to the South, while agricultural products are sold in the other direction.

Voluntary self-restrictions for the South

In the mid-1980s, Portugal and Spain joined the EU. This resulted in a U-turn in the EEC's policy towards North Africa: it now wanted to restrict this movement of goods in order to protect its new Iberian members from competition in the textile and agricultural sectors. While the treaties were not revoked, the countries of the southern Mediterranean were obliged to impose "voluntary self-restrictions" on themselves and limit their market shares to those of the years 1980 to 1984.

Opening the EU up to the countries of Eastern Europe reduces the room to manoeuvre for the countries of the Maghrib. In concrete terms, it means that more than anything else, credit and public economic aid will be redirected from the South to the East.

Between 1991 and 1994, the countries of the southern Mediterranean received only 1.6 billion ECUs (the European currency unit at the time) worth of credit from the coffers of the European Community/European Union, while no less than 3.8 billion ECUs flooded into Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, the volume of trade between the EC/EU and the countries of the southern Mediterranean initially remained greater than that between the EC/EU and Eastern and South-Eastern Europe at 78.8 and 46.6 billion ECUs respectively. At the same time, trade with the South was more profitable than trade with the East: the EU's surplus on the balance of trade was twice as high for the former (12.4 billion ECUs) as it was for the latter (5.8 billion ECUs).

Revived partnership

In the mid 1990s, the European Union decided to try and improve its relations to its southern neighbours. There were several reasons for this change of heart. Some EU Member States are looking for a counterbalance to the economic expansion into Eastern Europe, which - in their opinion - benefits Germany more than any other country.

In addition, after America's war on Iraq in the year 1991, there is a fear that Europe's influence in the region that extends from the Maghrib to the Gulf could dwindle and disappear.

Against the backdrop of the Algerian crisis, there is also a fear of the consequences of militant Islamism and, above all, possible waves of refugees. The latter has always been an important issue when it comes to co-operation with Morocco and Tunisia in particular.

This is why the Moroccan monarchy declared itself the champion of French interests in preventing emigration from its country. So much so that the father of the current king, Hassan II, invited the French right-wing extremist, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to Morocco to discuss the matter.

Morocco is also an important transit country for those migrating from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. The police forces in the authoritarian states of Morocco and Tunisia have been equipped at Europe's expense to enable them to locate and apprehend ships carrying refugees before they reach the shores of the EU.

With much pomp and circumstance, and numerous promises of "intercultural co-operation" and the elimination of prejudices, the formation of a free trade area for the Mediterranean region was announced at a European-Mediterranean Conference in Barcelona in 1995.

The preferred tool for this job is the conclusion of bilateral agreements between the EU and each individual country. With the exception of Libya, all Mediterranean countries have concluded such agreements with the EU as part of the "European-Mediterranean partnership". Algeria was one of the last countries to sign such an agreement when it did so at the Valencia summit in April 2002.

Bleak prospects of accession

These agreements resemble the treaties signed with the accession countries except that they do not offer any firm prospect of being accepted into the Union. They generally impose conditions such as the launch of an irreversibly defined process of economic liberalisation in the countries of the southern Mediterranean.

Between 2008 and 2010, for example, Tunisia is obliged to abolish all duties and import barriers that protect the country's barely competitive national economy against the much more competitive western companies.

That being said, the country has to date benefited from access to the EU market as it has concentrated on specific branches of industry such as tourism, electronics, and the supply of parts for the automotive industry. However, it is likely that the downside to this development – the collapse of native industries that are not competitive, increased unemployment, and increased economic dependency – will become evident towards the end of the decade.

According to a document on economic liberalisation reforms in the region written by the Commissariat général au Plan, a French economic authority, dating from the year 2000, it is practically "the weight of European voluntary action that is decisive because the countries of the southern Mediterranean are not in a position to be the motor of such a process." Unequivocal words.

The free trade agreements also contain clauses with political conditions. These conditions refer primarily to the respect for human rights. They are not just included as an alibi to get the EU off the hook in the event of possible public criticism, they are a potential means of exerting pressure on what are, for the most part, undoubtedly authoritarian states ... just in case these governments should start voicing their own interests a little too loudly at any stage.

This article was first published in the weekly newspaper Jungle World in January 2004.