The EU’s Neighbourhood Policy Before the Arab Uprisings: Rhetoric Versus Reality

This chapter sets the scene for analyses in Chaps. 4 and 5 by tracing the roots, rationales and evolution of the EU’s pre-Uprisings external relations in its Southern Neighbourhood. The chapter then examines the discursive structure of EU policies in the run-up to 2010–11 in three key areas: democracy, development and delivery. Key pre-Uprisings EU documents describe democracy in ‘procedural’ terms (elections, civil-political rights) and as defending the rights of women and minorities but pay scant attention to ‘difficult’ civil-political rights (association, protest) or to socioeconomic rights. Pre-Uprisings policy also aims for ‘sustainable and inclusive growth’ through economic liberalisation. Finally, conditionality is the EU’s main instrument for leveraging progress on human rights and democracy, making access to the Common Market conditional on delivery of progress in these areas. While pre-Uprisings delivery was framed in terms of both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ conditionality, in practice these levers were used exceedingly rarely.