EU and the Middle East: history of complex relationship

EU and the Middle East:

history of complex relationship

Author: Przemyslaw Zawada

​25.04.2022 19:00-20:30-> EU and the Middle East: history of complex relationship

16.05.2022 19:00-20:30-> Is Israel an European country or rather Middle Eastern?         

30.05.2022 19:00-20:30-> EU and Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

06.06.2022 19:00-20:30-> Iran's nuclear program and EU

​Agenda for our classes

​1. Introduction.

​2. Few general remarks.

3. ​Middle East or Near East?​

4. ​EU involvement in the Middle East.

5. ​Main issues.

6. ​Q&A

​Agenda for today

Multiple Select

Choose the country/countries that are not considered as Middle Eastern:

• Iran

• Turkey

• Tunisia

• Morocco

• Israel

3. ​Middle East or Near East?

• ​Middle East essentially supplanted Near East in the early 20th century, although the two are now used interchangeably among English speakers. So, for all intents and purposes, Middle East and Near East refer to the same region when used today.

• ​This hasn’t always been the case. The term Near East was coined in the 19th century when Westerners divided the “Orient” into three parts: the Near East, the Middle East, and the Far East. The Near East included the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, while the Middle East ranged between the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia—quite a small region compared with what we consider to be the Middle East today. (The Far East encompassed Asian countries facing the Pacific Ocean.)

• ​Today some people consider the Middle East to span from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, but many scholars prefer to use the acronym MENA—Middle East and North Africa—as they feel it more accurately describes the region of their research - and I agree with it.

3. ​Middle East or Near East?

​Sometimes, the definition of Middle East is extended to include the concept of the "Greater Middle East" that includes Afghanistan, the Comoros, Djibouti, Maghreb, Pakistan, Sudan, and Somalia.

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https://www.geoguessr.com/seterra/en/vgp/3049

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3. ​Middle East Facts

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• The Middle East has been referred to as ' the crossroads of the world' because it connects the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

• The majority of Muslims do not live in the Middle East. More Muslims live in South Asia than in the Middle East and North Africa combined.

• The country with the world's largest Muslim population is Indonesia, which is in South Asia, not the Middle East.

• Roughly 60% of the population in the Middle East is under 25 years old.

• The term “Arab” generally refers to people who speak Arabic as their first language.

• The majority of Arabs are Muslims, but the majority of Muslims are not Arabs.

• Three of the seven wonders of the ancient world are in the Middle East: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

• Cairo, Egypt is the largest city in the Middle East with a population of roughly 16 million.

3. ​Middle East Politcal Facts

​Political regimes in the Middle East have different forms of government. There are:

• parliamentary republics in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen, and post-Taliban Afghanistan;

• traditional monarchies in Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia;

• constitutional monarchies in Jordan and Morocco.

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There are also several unique governing structures, including:

• Libya's jamahiriya, where local councils are supposed to govern (although Libya is in fact a military dictatorship);

• the United Arab Emirates, where several traditionally chosen rulers collaborate in a federation;

• the Islamic Republic of Iran, where religious scholars oversee an elected parliament and president.

4. ​EU involvement in the Middle East.

• ​The Middle East is not a uniform region, it is not one state or an international organization, so it is difficult to talk about a unified, common EU policy towards the Middle East. Instead, it has a set of interlocking policies toward specific sub-regions, countries and issue areas.

• ​The pronouncements of the European Union (EU) in the mid-1990s suggested that it was willing to become a more decisive player in the Middle East.

• As global actor, the EU had established policy positions and potential economic leverage in respect of all these sub-sectors of the wider Middle Eastand appeared poised for lift-off as a power to be reckoned with in the region, capable of counterbalancing, if not rivalling, the United States.

• However, did EU succeed?​

5. Main issues

• Euro-Mediterranean Relations

• Middle East Peace Process

• Iran

• EU and the Gulf countries

5. Main issues: Euro-Mediterranean Relations

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• In November 1995 the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Programme was launched with the signing of the Barcelona Declaration by the fifteen member states of the EU together with Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on behalf of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Cyprus and Malta

• In 2004 the EU introduced a new instrument - the European Neighbourhoods Policy.

• In 2008 the EU launched a new initiative, the Union for the Mediterranean(UfM), incorporating all but the cultural component of the EMP

5. Main issues: Middle East Peace Process

• ​ imaginations about EU's role and the ultimate impact on it,

• ​status of the Middle East Peace Process,

• ​Which side of the conflict does the EU support?

5. Main issues: Iran

• ​US-Iran relations vs EU-Iran relations;

• ​The nuclear issue;​

• ​Russian invasion on Ukraine - a chance for Iran?

5. Main issues: EU and the Gulf countries

• ​In many respects the EU approach to the Gulf Cooperation Council states has not changed substantially since the 1990s, but therein lies cause for concern.

• Whereas in the 1990s the EU could urge both economic and political reforms on the GCC states, for the benefit of their economies and closer trading relations with the EU, today it is the GCC states who possess the financial resources to bale out European banks and drive development in both the Gulf region and the restof the Middle East. Their investments in the Maghreb countries in particular now rival those of the Europeans.

• EU-GCC trade still flourishes, the balance is in favour of the EU and the EU remains dependent on Gulf energy supplies.

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​6. Questions?