Synchronicity and Reciprocity in the EuroMediterranean Partnership: Business Social Responsibility in the Magreb and Mashriq within the Framework of an Intergovernmental Organization. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 13 September 2007

Boening, Astrid B. (2007) Synchronicity and Reciprocity in the EuroMediterranean Partnership: Business Social Responsibility in the Magreb and Mashriq within the Framework of an Intergovernmental Organization. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 13 September 2007.

Abstract

[From the introduction] The EMP constitutes the EU’s main multilateral foreign policy instrument in MENA. Currently, the EMP comprises the twenty-five EU member states, and ten Mediterranean Partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey, which is also an EU candidate country) and Libya as observer since 1999). Malta and Cyprus, also original EuroMed Partners, are now EU member states. In this paper I will also examine whether there are indications for the “growing trend toward the private ordering of functions traditionally regulated by the public sector” (Cutler, 216) in MENA within the framework of the EMP. Additionally I will discuss whether there are government forces (i.e. the IGO relationship between the EU and the governments of MENA), which, though of “soft character” (Ibid.) and not legally binding on the private sector’s BSR, may yet have indirect legal effects which are effecting initiatives aimed at facilitating the adjustments of their societies and political economies to global market forces (Ibid., 217).