EU Aid Policy in the Middle East and North Africa: Politicization and its Limits

Abstract

Some elements of EU assistance to the countries of MENA have become more politicized in recent years. This is largely because sharper differences of opinion have emerged over EU funds being used to limit migration and for security aims. Contestation has intensified horizontally between different EU institutions and European governments. However, this politicization varies across different policy areas and different parts of the MENA region, and in some instances remains relatively muted. After outlining the general increase in salience and wider institutional engagement; we then contrast this with the more measured increase in the third dimension of politicization, namely polarization over the EU's MENA aid policies. We offer three examples of the way that internal policy‐making dynamics have softened polarization and discuss implications for the broader analysis of EU foreign and security policy. We conclude that different kinds of dynamics both drive and limit politicization within the EU's external policies.

The Politicization of the Migration–Development Nexus: Parliamentary Discourse on the European Union Trust Fund on Migration

“…In our conceptualization, ALs form the building blocks for processes of discursive contestation, contingency and conflict, and they discursively structure the parliamentary debates (Schmidt et al ., 2012). Hence, we do not conceive the nexus between migration and development as something that objectively exists, but rather as something that is discursively construed by political actors (Bergmann et al ., 2019; Youngs and Zihnioğlu, 2021, Hackenesch et al ., 2021). In other words, we will examine the discursive connection that political actors make when debating the two policy domains, thus forming the nexus.…”

Development Policy under Fire? The Politicization of European External Relations*

“…Actors may hold very similar or opposing views with regard to the objectives or instruments of European development policy. Whereas development policy has traditionally been an elite affair in which a small community of decision‐makers, implementing agencies and CSOs held largely similar views, we recently have observed much more opposition to development policy at the national or European level (Lauwers et al, 2021; Raunio and Wagner, 2021; or Youngs and Zihnioğlu, 2021). Finally, the term actor and audience expansion – sometimes also referred to as mobilization (Rauh, 2019) – signifies that a growing number of actors are engaged in the debates about European development policy.…”

“…Previous research has emphasized that authority transfer (for example, in the treaty of Maastricht) and critical events (such as the Euro crisis) can trigger politicization. In development policy, for instance, the creation of trust funds as new EU instruments has increased public awareness of the relevance of the EU as an actor in addressing security and migration challenges (Lauwers et al, 2021; Montanaro and Räty, 2019; Youngs and Zihnioğlu, 2021). External shocks and critical events (Börzel and Risse, 2018; Niemann and Zaun, 2018) such as terrorist attacks in Europe, climate change emergencies, increased migration and refugee flows or budgetary scandals on the use of aid can also contribute to the politicization of European development policy.…”

“…As the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU defines development cooperation as a shared competence with EU member states maintaining their own development policies in parallel to the one governed by the EU institutions (TFEU Article 4.4), it is necessary to take both levels into account when analysing the politicization of European development policy. This is also reflected by the individual contributions to the special issue: some focus primarily on the politicization of the development policy of EU institutions (Chaban and Elgström, 2021; Youngs and Zihnioğlu, 2021), while others include all EU member states into their analysis (Bergmann et al, 2021; Kiratli, 2021) or opt for a selection of relevant aid donors among them (Lauwers et al, 2021; Saltnes and Thiel, 2021).…”

Outside‐in Politicization of EU–Western Africa Relations: What Role for Civil Society Organizations?

“…Based on its 2011 Sahel strategy that links security and development policy, the EU has increasingly focused on the region since 2014 (Plank, 2020). In addition to the EU Trust Fund for Africa that funds migration‐related projects (Lauwers et al ., 2021; Youngs and Zihnioğlu, 2021) and three EU missions (EUCAP Sahel Niger, EUCAP Sahel Mali, and EUTM Mali), the EU supports the G5 Sahel, a regional group founded by Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad in 2014. With reference to these trends, this section specifically focuses on the period from 2014 to early 2020 and analyses the EU´s approach to the Sahel region generally as well as relations between the EU and the G5 states specifically.…”