Unequal Partners in the EU Southern Neighborhood Strategy: Is Regional Integration Feasible? EUMA Papers, Vol. 5, No. 4 February 2008

Boening, Astrid B. (2008) Unequal Partners in the EU Southern Neighborhood Strategy: Is Regional Integration Feasible? EUMA Papers, Vol. 5, No. 4 February 2008.

Abstract

[From the introduction]. Security issues are still as prevalent in the Mediterranean today as they have been since at least the Trojan Wars some three thousand years ago. Paritcularly since 9/11, securing the EU’s borders, as with most country’s borders, has become even more imperative. The EU’s southern borders (i.e. to its north African and Middle Eastern neighbors), however have been difficult to secure. Specifically, illegal immigration, usually in direct relation to the economic wellbeing of the originating country, has been difficult to control especially by those European countries bordering the Mediterranean: Spain, France, Italy, and to a lesser extent, Greece. The riots in the last few years in France, the terrorist attacks in Madrid, and the recent increase in murders in Italy by illegal immigrants have led European law enforcement to undergo the financially and socially difficult task of increased forcible repatriations. In addition to the frailty of EU border integrity to the south, Libya under Gadafy (and apparently his son) represents a neighbor who is only barely, and very cautiously, becoming re-socialized into the Euro-Mediterranean “neighborhood”.