Europe And The Mena Region

One of the most important challenges concerning the future of the European Union is the demographic reproduction of the European population. Decreasing birth-rates and the retirement of the baby boomers will dramatically reduce the labour force in the EU, which will entail not only a lack of manpower but also lower contributions to European social systems. It seems clear that the EU will have to counterbalance this population decrease by immigration in the coming years. Migration Between the Middle East, North Africa and Europe takes this challenge as a point of departure for analysing the MENA region, in particular Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, as a possible source of future migration to the European Union. At the same time, it illustrates the uncertainties implied in such calculations, especially at a time of radical political changes, such as those brought about by the Arab Uprising.

This book examines the European Union's response to the Arab spring, from late 2010 to the beginning of 2014. It investigates how far the EU changed its policies towards the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the aftermath of the Arab spring, and what impact European policies had in either helping or hindering democratization reforms during this period. It also explores what impact the Arab spring had on European security and economic interests. Analytically the book unpacks the factors that best explain EU policy choices in the Middle East since 2010. It highlights how the responses to the Arab spring have changed the governance dynamics of the EU-Middle East relationship. The book assesses how far the EU foreign policy has succeeded in meeting the challenge of the Arab spring. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Although geographically contiguous, culturally and 'developmentally' Europe and the Middle East are still 'distant neighbours'. The record of relations between the two regions, especially in trade, finance and investment reveals that while Europe is concerned about oil, immigration and Islamic radicalism, countries of the Middle East and North Africa are worried about their developmental prospects and possible marginalisation by an enlarging Europe. The distinguished contributors to this book, writing in either English or French, examine the potential and the prospects for establishing a new 'development zone' that will promote fuller co-operation between the two shores of the Mediterranean.

Since the 1970s, globalization has created an economic environment of interdependency between nations. Now, many countries in European and the MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) regions must grapple with the need to increase public revenue while maneuvering through a global “race-to-the-bottom” tax competition. The Handbook of Research on Public Finance in Europe and the MENA Region explores economic development and public finance by providing critical insight into the use of public finance and policy and illuminating the intricacies of these topics through discussion of theory, empirical work, and policy objectives. This book is ideally designed for business professionals, policy makers, financers, students and researchers in the fields of public policy and economics.

Resisting Europe conceptualizes the foreign policies of Europe—defined as the European Union and its member states—toward the states in its immediate southern “neighborhood” as semi-imperial attempts to turn these states into Europe’s southern buffer zone, or borderlands. In these hybrid spaces, different types of rules and practices coexist and overlap, and negotiations over meaning and implementation take place. This book examines the diverse modalities by which states in the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa (MENA) reject, resist, challenge, modify, or entirely change European policies and preferences and provides rich empirical evidence of these contestation practices in the fields of migration and border control, banking and finance, democracy promotion, and telecommunications. It addresses the complex question of when and how MENA states capitalize on their leverage and interdependence in their relationships with Europe and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Europe–Middle East relations, while engaging with broader debates on power and interdependence, order, and contestation in international relations. While a contribution on the practices of resistance and contestation of MENA states vis-à-vis European policies and preferences in this geopolitically significant region was overdue, this volume leads the way for subsequent studies that seek to overcome the constraints of exceptionalism so characteristic of research of the Middle East, Europe/the European Union, and certainly of their relationship.

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This volume brings together an international network of political scientists and economists to offer options and strategies for strengthening Euro-Middle-East political, economic and social relations.

The Middle East is a region of crises, conflicts and wars as much as it is a region of great potential and opportunity. However, the European Union and its member states have not yet found a viable strategic approach to meet both the challenges and opportunities in their immediate neighbourhood. The Europeans have not yet developed sufficient foreign and security policy mechanisms to pursue their interests effectively. How the European Union can support economic and political transformation processes throughout the region and thus contribute to a more stable, more democratic Middle East remains the subject of intense debate. The objective of this book is to provide a platform for this debate about the European Union's future role as a player in the Middle East, at a crucial moment in EU-U.S-Middle East relations. As the European Union re-organizes its Mediterranean policies and the United States vote a new president into office, the authors of this book discuss a wide range of topics related to European foreign policy in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Gulf region, Europe's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the state of transformation processes in the region. Book jacket.