a Distinctive Part of the EU

WHEN SOUTHERN EUROPE BECAME A DISTINCTIVE PART OF THE EU

István Szilágyi

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM AND GLOBALISATION

The European Union (EU), as a sui generis political system, is a multifaceted entity. It is a macroregion linking several regions, areas, systems, and countries to the notion of Europe, within which there are significant political, economic, social, cultural, linguistic, and foreign policy tradition differences, manifesting themselves in various priorities. It is intergovernmentalism that fundamentally characterises the union’s foreign and security policy, its ties to the other parts of the world, as well as its actions to resolve international conflicts.

The formation of this foreign policy system is highly influenced by the eastern enlargement,1 the Barcelona Process launched in November 1995,2 and the European Neighbourhood Policy introduced in 2003.3

Links between the EU’s Mediterranean countries and the so-called Third World date back half a millennium; however, when examining the European Union’s relations with Latin America and the Caribbean,4 we must consider the changes that occurred after the end of the bipolar world (c. 1991), while the emergence of a multiplayer, global political system has also brought significant changes to it. In the last third of the 20th century, the termination of organised East–West conflicts, combined with the significant shift of focus in international relations, resulted in the fact that foreign policies, political actions, and the room to manouvre for states, intergovernmental organisations, and regional integrations are now increasingly dominated by non-traditional forms and means of international relations. Within the extended framework of a “transnational foreign policy,” the role of “civilisations” is enhanced, and the network of relations, virtual or real, between regional and subregional entities is extended. The importance of non-national, non-governmental social actors, institutions, organisations, and movements in foreign policy is growing.

Globalisation and the influence of civilisations on foreign policy are not new. Joaquím Aguiar, in line with Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept, links the first wave of globalisation to the great European expansion of the 16th–17th centuries.5 The trade of various products in this world system transcended national and European borders early on; internationalisation and global contact as a process linked regions with the sphere of cultures and civilisations. The second wave of globalisation, stretching from the second half of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century, witnessed the circulation of capital and the emergence of US hegemony. “The present type of globalisation, however,” according to Aguiar, “which, from the 20th, leads up to the 21st century, manifests itself as a higher-level synthesis of the previous two: as a network of eternal changes and movements, a neverending and uninterrupted circulation of products and capitals.”6 In this era of postnational globalisation, politics, and foreign policy, the territorial fundamentals of power are largely replaced with a web of processes, networks, currents, as well as control over cyberspace. Despite global movements of a transnational nature, collective existence in the 21st century has several divergent modalities and forms. Geographical factors, borders symbolising territoriality, as well as classic nation states, ethnic, cultural, and civilisational differences behind integration and disintegration tendencies, and strategic cooperation representing the new regionalism of continental–integrational

Members of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM)

The institutional structure of UfM

EU members

EU members on the Mediterranean Other members Suspended members Observers

Co-presidency Secretariat

Political/security policy basket

Financial/economic basket

Cultural basket 6 projects

Depollution of the Mediterranean Sea

The establishment of maritime and land highways

Civil protection in natural and man-made disasters

Mediterranean solar energy plan

The Euro-Mediterranean University in Slovenia

Mediterranean Business Development Initiative focussing on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises

[to complement and not to duplicate]

cooperations are all present in the network of international relations at the same time, and they are all tightly linked to one another.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The Mediterranean area has always played a significant role in the history of Europe and the whole world. The Mediterranean Sea extends over more than 2.5 million square kilometres and stretches over the territories of three continents, which are known as the meeting point and the cradle of the three monotheistic world religions and various cultures. Thus, the Mediterranean area is an inseparable part of Europe, European culture, and civilisation.

The Mediterranean area has also played a significant role in the external relations of the European integration, as the events that occur there affect the life of the Southern European states: the safety of Europe and the European Union have been threatened by recurring social upheavals, unemployment, together with crucial social problems, migration waves, and Islamic fundamentalism. The political weight of the Mediterranean area has been increased by the extension of the European integration, and, in turn, strengthening the southern wing of the European Union has also increased the Mediterranean area’s role in and influence on the European project.

It is a well-known fact that a strongly Mediterranean-focussed yet far from unified group was formed in the European Community with the participation of two founding members, Italy and France. It was later complemented by Greece in 1981 and, then, by Portugal and Spain in 1985 upon these countries’ accession to the EU. Due to the complexity of the issue, this paper will principally focus on the Mediterraneanrelated policies of Spain and the allied Portugal, which significantly affects the EU’s foreign policy decision making, partly as a result of the 2010–2011 Spanish–Belgian–Hungarian team presidency. Both Portugal and Spain have their own, divergent interests in European integration. These differences are partly connected to the foreign policy ties of the two countries. Portuguese foreign policy has had three priorities since the beginning of the 1960s: the Atlantic alignment, the European orientation, and the creation of the Lusitanian unity. As a mediumsize continental power, Spain focussed on Latin America, Europe, and, in the Mediterranean region, the Maghreb countries. Spain has been striving to deepen and develop the network of connections linking the Mediterranean region to the European Community. At the beginning of the 1990s, this led to the emergence of the opposing northern and southern poles, and, later, as the Eastern enlargement was put on the agenda, the east–south contrast also became manifest. It was Spain that played the most important role in pursuing and representing this line of policy.

THE BARCELONA PROCESS AND UNION FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN

At the time the northern enlargement appeared on the EU’s agenda, Spain and Portugal conducted a campaign of increasing intensity to direct the community’s attention to the Mediterranean region. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Spanish foreign policy made enormous efforts to deepen Euro-Mediterranean ties and to integrate Mediterranean countries into the organisation’s system. The Spanish presidencies of the first half of 1989 and the second half of 1995 provided excellent occasions for these endeavours. As a final event of the latter period, the first EuroMediterranean conference was convened in the Catalan capital, composing and issuing a joint declaration and launching the Barcelona Process, which put Mediterranean links at the forefront of the union’s policy. The meeting organised between 27 and 28 November 1995 was in itself the peak of a years-long series of preliminary talks and negotiations, where the Spanish–Portuguese efforts finally yielded results. The Euro-Mediterranean Declaration was issued, and a work programme was also accepted. The declaration contained plans for wide-ranging political, economic, security, and cultural cooperation that extended until 2010 and was supported by fourteen EU member states and eleven countries from Africa and the Mediterranean (Israel, Algeria, Cyprus,

Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey). The document published in the Catalan capital became the foundation for the Barcelona Process, with which the two states of the Iberian Peninsula pressed ahead.

The declaration consists of four major parts. The first chapter (“Political and security partnership: Establishing a common area of peace and stability”) discusses the issues of political and security cooperation and outlines the common space for peace and stability. The declaration establishes the principles of dialogue between the signing parties, promises respect for human rights, rule of law, political democracy and fundamental rights for freedom, exchange of information, tolerance, measures against xenophobia and racism, the acknowledgement of equality and sovereignty, respect for the autonomy of nations, noninterference, upholding the norms of international law, respect for territorial integrity, the peaceful settlement of debates, common action against terrorism and crime, the preservation of regional security, and the maintenance of the nuclear weapons–free zone.

The second part, which sets the rules for economic and financial cooperation (“Economic and financial partnership: Creating an area of shared prosperity”) shows commitment to sustainable and balanced economic growth, declaring, at the same time, that the EU’s financial presence in the region will greatly increase. It also claims that a free-trade zone will be created until 2010.

The third section (“Partnership in social, cultural and Human affairs: Developing human resources, promoting understanding between cultures and exchanges between civil societies”) details the issues of cooperation between social, cultural, and human spheres and civil societies. Finally, the fourth chapter (“Follow-up to the conference”) contains the follow-up measures of the conference. The “Work Programme” appended records the practical measures to be taken in connection with the principles and fields described in the declaration.

In summary, it may be stated that the Barcelona Process spearheaded by Spain has worked towards the institutionalisation of the complex system of ties linking the European Union and the Southern Mediterranean and gives a new meaning to the notion of security. The principle of the free-trade zone creates an opportunity for partner countries to acquire a partnership status similar to the one EastCentral European countries enjoyed in 1995. Therefore, the conference set a broad framework for political, economic, and social relations between the EU member states and their partners in the Southern Mediterranean. The EU enlargement on 1 May 2004 and 1 January 2007, respectively, brought two Mediterranean partners (Cyprus and Malta) into the European Union, while adding a total of ten new members to it. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership thus comprises thirty-seven members, twenty-seven of which are the member states of the EU and ten are their Mediterranean partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestine Authority, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey), while Libya has an observer status.

As already emphasised, the partnership established three main objectives. First, the definition of a common area of peace and stability through the reinforcement of political and security dialogue. Second, the construction of a zone of shared prosperity through an economic and financial partnership and the gradual establishment of a free-trade area. And third, the rapprochement between peoples through a social, cultural, and human partnership aimed at encouraging understanding between cultures and exchanges between civil societies.

Besides, the partnership also comprises two complementary dimensions: the bilateral and the regional dimensions. In the framework of the bilateral dimension, the EU carries out a number of activities with each country bilaterally. The most important ones of them are the EuroMediterranean Association Agreements that the union negotiates with each Mediterranean partner individually. The regional dimension represents one of the most innovative aspects of the partnership, covering the political, economic, and cultural fields simultaneously, and has a considerable strategic impact, as it deals with problems that are common to many

Mediterranean partners it also emphasises the national complementaries.

The Barcelona Process has created a tradition and become institutionalised during the past twenty-eight years, and Euro-Mediterranean conferences have also been carried on. Eight years later, on 3 December 2003, by the decision of the ministerial conference of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in Naples, the parties agreed to set up the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA), which held its first session in Cairo between 12 and 15 May 2005. The EMPA’s Final Declaration “emphasizes the centrality of the Barcelona Process as the main instrument for partnership and dialogue between the Euro-Mediterranean Partners.”7

The European Union’s European Neighbourhood Policy launched in 2003 was also acclaimed, as the participants “[w]elcome[d] the progress made in developing the European Neighbourhood Policy, as a policy to enhance the Barcelona Process, provided it does not eclipse either the principles—equality, coresponsibility, mutual respect, solidarity, and cooperation—or the multilateral framework of Barcelona.”8 They also “[u]nderline[d] the principle of co-ownership of the Barcelona Process and the often-repeated request of Mediterranean partners to participate fully in the formulation and implementation of policies and programmes within the framework of the Barcelona Process.”9

Migration routes to Spain and the fight against migration

ITALY

SPAIN

LAMPEDUSA (ITALY)

CANARY ISLANDS (SPAIN)

MOROCCO

Algiers Melilla (SPAIN)

TUNISIA

WESTERN SAHARA

Nouakchott

ALGERIA

MAURITANIA

MALI

SENEGAL NIGERIA GREECE TURKEY

LESBOS (GREECE)

SYRIA

LIBYA EGYPT

CAMEROON

2006: The route through the Canary Islands (Spain). 2007: As the route through the Canary Islands was closed, migrants from Africa tried to get to Europe through Italy. 2011–2012: After the Arab Spring, Syrians and Libyans also wanted to enter Europe through Italy and through Greece. 2012–2015: Syrian refugees also tried to get to Europe through Melilla (Spain).

The EMPA has played a consultative role and it has provided the parliamentary impetus, input, and support for the consolidation and development of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. It expresses its views on all issues relating to the partnership, including the implementation of association agreements. It adopts resolutions or recommendations, which are legally non-binding, addressed to the EuroMediterranean conference. It consists of a maximum of 240 members, 120 of which are Europeans (75 from the EU national parliaments and 45 from the European Parliament) and 120 are from the ten Mediterranean partners, thus guaranteeing the North–South parity.

At the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean in 2008, EU member states and their Mediterranean partners (the representatives of forty-three countries) decided to draw up an institutional framework called The Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean based on the Barcelona Declaration. The Barcelona Process remained the predecessor of the Union for the Mediterranean. In November 2008, the Marseille meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean ministers of foreign affairs introduced a new institutional structure, including the co-presidency that represented the EU and the Mediterranean partner countries.

In 2021, more than twenty-eight years after the Barcelona Process was launched, “it is obvious that European stability cannot be separated from the regional security, political stability, and sustainable economic development of the Mediterranean area. Europe is under pressure due to migration crises in the Mediterranean area, and fragile and quasi-failing states (Syria, Libya) and even religious extremism (ISIS) have posed serious challenges for the EU foreign policy. It is not surprising, therefore, that after the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2015, there has been a greater emphasis on stability in the relations between the EU and its neighbours.”10

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND LATIN AMERICA: A BI-REGIONAL STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

In the reference frame of global relations, connections between the European Union, on the one hand, and Latin America and the Caribbean, on the other, have intensified over the last quarter century.11 In this process, the EU’s Mediterranean countries—mainly Spain and Portugal—played a fundamental role. In the 1980s, the European Parliament declared the strategic importance of cooperation with the Third World, and especially the South American continent. Following the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community, this dimension primarily came to focus on tightening political, economic, and cultural ties to achieve a status of associate membership through predominantly Spanish mediation. Intensifying and deepening contacts led to the first summit of heads of state and government held in Rio de Janeiro in 1999. The regular highest-level meetings, the joint sessions of Latin American parliaments and European Parliamentary representatives, cooperation between various subregional integration organisations (Andean Community, Mercosur, The Union of South American Nations) and interregional actors (Ibero-American Community of Nations), and the jointly launched development programmes led to the institutionalisation of the strategic alliance between the European Union and Latin America. The foundation of this partnership lies in a common historical past, values, and culture, the defence of democracy, a wish to create a multipolar international system, and identical political objectives. The ambition to terminate the asymmetrical economic relationship prevalent among the parties to the present day plays a major role in shaping the political partnership. Strengthening the partnership between the two regions has a significant influence on changes within the system of international relations.

ISLAM AND MIGRATION IN SOUTHERN EUROPE AND THE EXPERIENCES OF THE IBERIAN PENINSULA

The political entities of the Iberian Peninsula, which form a significant part of the Mediterranean world, often occupied an active history-forming role in regional and, in certain periods, global economic and social processes. The Mediterranean is a geographic region that

connects and separates cultural fault lines. Traditionally, it has such an empire-forming and migration-attracting potential that should not be ignored in any historical period.

The region as the geographical backdrop to ethnic and demographic mobility—the peninsula itself also forming its part—is the scene of different, simultaneously existing cultural identities, where the 21st-century dilemmas and questions about the arrival of Islam are waiting for answers and social, economic, and political reactions.

The history of the area is organically connected with the rise and fall of empires, migration waves, and movements of people. Great migrations have been well-known phenomena throughout history. There can be several reasons (push factors) behind them such as political (the fall of empires, wars, failed states), economic (crises, environmental degradation, catastrophes, epidemics), and other intellectual, religious, and cultural factors.

Migration raises several questions, among others, how civilisations encounter and clash and what the chances of different identities’ coexistence are. Today, in the period of migratory waves also coming from the Islamic area, these questions acquire increasing significance.

There are three distinctive historical periods in the relations between the peninsula and the Islamic world, and each of them brought about significant social changes in the life of the Mediterranean area. Nowadays, 5.6 million immigrants live in Spain, which makes up 12% of the whole population. There is a well-organised 2 million-strong Islamic community in the country, a part of which has also radicalised. With the terrorist attack at Madrid Atocha railway station, jihadist terrorism also appeared in Spain on 11 March 2004.12

At the same time, migration has also contributed to the economic development of the country. The majority of the immigrants have found employment in the construction industry, as well as tourism and agriculture. Multiculturalism has appeared, and so-called parallel societies have been formed, as Musulmans coming from the Western Sahara, Morocco, and other parts of Africa (after 1995)13 and a larger number of immigrants from the Arab countries, as a consequence of the Arab Spring in 2011, have settled down in Spain. This phenomenon can be observed in the autonomous communities of the Levante—Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia—and Andalusia. Migration waves coming from the central and Sub-Saharan part of Africa, home to grave political crises, and also arriving from Syria and Iraq since 2012, supported by Mauritania and Algeria, have been hung up in Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous Spanish cities on the northern shores of Morocco. The Spanish government also blocked the illegal migrational route via the Canary Islands in 2007. As a consequence, migration waves coming from the Islamic countries have been directed towards Italy and Greece. As mentioned above, Melilla became a destination for migration again after 2012. In response to the migration pressure or crisis (as it was referred by many), which has nearly become the migration of nations, the Spanish government built a much more fortified fence system.

Portugal, the other country of the Iberian Peninsula, has run parallel and been interwoven with the development of Spain in many aspects, albeit the many differences between them.

Until the middle of the 1970s, Portugal could be characterised by emigration, not immigration. From 1958 to 1974, one and a half million people left the country. The majority of these emigrants settled down in Brazil, the US, Argentina, Venezuela, Canada, and the developed countries of Western Europe. The main reasons behind this emigration were bread-and-butter issues, economic difficulties, unemployment, and a refusal to live in a dictatorial system. Later, from the second half of the 1960s, avoiding conscription for Portugal’s colonial war became the leading reason for emigrating to other countries.14

As it also happened in Spain, these tendencies in Portugal also changed after the country had joined the European Community in 1986. Portugal, the land of emigrants, became the country of immigrants. The first big group of immigrants was that of those people who returned to Portugal from Western Europe.

The largest immigrant communities in Portugal in 2019

BRAZIL 151,314

25.6%

UK 34,358

5.8%

FRANCE 23,125

3.9% UKRAINE 29,718

5.0%

ROMANIA 31,065

5.3%

CAPE VERDE 37,436

6.3%

ITALY 25,408

4.3%

GUINEA-BISSAU 18,886

3.2% ANGOLA 22,691

3.8%

Legend

151,314 Number of residents 25.6% % relative to the total

CHINA 27,839

4.7%

OTHER 188,518

31.9%

After the fall of the dictatorship, the emigrants who had left their motherland for economic or political reasons and the colonial war finally got back home. The second group of immigrants was that of the white inhabitants of the former Portuguese colonies. Approximately 600,000 people from the countries which had just gained independence, such as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde, flooded back into European Portugal. The third group of immigrants arrived from Brasil. After the middle of the 1990s, as the relation between the former motherland and its erstwhile African colonies had normalised, a new wave of immigration from the Portuguese-speaking African countries (Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa) started. After 1999, migration from Eastern and Central Europe also accelerated. The latter wave can be subdivided into two parts: that of “the Slavs” who come from Ukraine, Russia, and Bulgaria and that of the “Eastern European Latins,” i.e., Romanians and Moldovians. Since the beginning of the second millennium, the number of Asian immigrants has also significantly increased. Most of them are from India, China, and Pakistan. As a result of all the above, the 2015 number of legal settlers in Portugal exceeded 500,000, which equals 5% of the country’s population.

In contrast to Spain, Portuguese multiculturalism does not lead to parallel societies. The vast majority of immigrants coming from four continents—Europe, Africa, America, and Asia—are from cultures rooted in the European civilisation.

According to the Portuguese National Institute for Statistics, the Muslim population in Portugal amounted to 40,000 in 2011. A part of it arrived from the former overseas territories of Portugal, namely Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Southern Asia. There is no indication that they have connections to the Islamic State or

hold extreme views. Unlike Spain, Portugal has not had to face Islamist terrorist attacks so far, or, as mentioned above, challenges arising from parallel societies.15

SUMMARY

Since the 1990s, the Southern European region has become a distinctive part of the European Union. This fact has been explained with political and economic turning points, political crises, the appearance of new difficulties, and the emergence of populism. The first important moment when the Mediterranean area had an impact on the European Union was the announcement of the Barcelona Process, which later continued as the Union for the Mediterranean. Creating the bi-regional strategic alliance between the European Union and Latin America, as well as the Caribbean can be considered the second moment of this kind. There is also a third significant element, migration, for which the region should be observed. The roles taken on by both Portugal and Spain in how the three above-mentioned processes evolve deserve special attention.

ENDNOTES

1 Szilágyi István: Az Európai Unió „harmadik világ” politikája és a keleti bővítés. Comitatus. 2004/7–8. 7–21. See also István Szilágyi: Política exterior y la ampliación de la Unión Europea. Las enseñanzas mediterráneas y húngaras. Veszprémi Humán Tudományokért Alapítvány, Veszprém, 2007. 2 István Szilágyi: The Barcelona Process Revisited in the SBH Presidency. In: New Perspectives for the Team Presidencies: New Members, New Candidates and New Neighbours, edited by Attila Ágh–Judit Kis-Varga. Together for Europe Research Center, Budapest, 2008. 423–443. See also Szilágyi István: Barcelonától Barcelonáig – az Euro-mediterrán partnerség tizenöt éve. Mediterrán Világ. 2012/24. 3–21. 3 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. A Strong European Neighbourhood Policy. EUR-Lex. 5 December 2007. <https://bit. ly/32VPrFa > 4 István Szilágyi: The European Union and South America. In: Regional and Bilateral Relations of the European Union, edited by Zoltán Gálik–Anna Molnár. Dialóg Campus, Budapest, 2019. 185–208. See also István Szilágyi: The European Union and Latin America: A Bi-regional Strategic Alliance. History Research. 2020/2. 33–47. 5 Joaquím Aguiar: Modelos de Globalização. In: O Interesse Nacional e a Globalização, edited by Nuno Severiano Teixeira–José Cervaens Rodrigues–Isabel Ferreira Nunes. Edições Cosmos, Lisbon, 2000. See also Immanuel Wallerstein: A modern világgazdasági rendszer kialakulása. Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest, 1983. 6 Aguiar. 7 Conclusions of the First Session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly. Resolution of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly on the assessment of the Barcelona Process on the eve of its tenth anniversary adopted on 15 March 2005 in Cairo based on the resolution tabled by Mrs Tokia Saïfi, Chairperson, on behalf of the Committee on Political, Security and Human Rights Issues. Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean. 12–15 March 2005. 4. <https://bit.ly/3eSxMUz > 8 Idem, 4. 9 Idem, 5–6. 10 Anna Molnár: The EU and the Mediterranean Region. In: Regional and Bilateral Relations of the European Union, edited by Zoltán Gálik–Anna Molnár. Dialóg Campus, Budapest, 2019. 29. 11 Szilágyi (2019), 185–209; Szilágyi (2020), 33–47. 12 Szilágyi István: Iszlám és migráció az Ibériai-félszigeten. In: Európa és a migráció, edited by Besenyő János–Miletics Péter–Orbán Balázs. Zrínyi Kiadó, Budapest, 2019. 540–561. 13 Large immigration flows during the 1995–2007 period increased the weight of foreigners living in Spain to 12% of the total population. Mario Izquierdo–Juan F. Jimeno–Aitor Lacuesta: Spain: from massive immigration to vast emigration? IZA Journal of Development and Migration. 2016/5. <https:// doi.org/10.1186/s40176-016-0058-y > 14 Fernando Rosas–Pedro Aires Oliveira: A Transição falhada. O marcelismo e o fim do Estado Novo (1968–1974). Editorial Notícias, Lisbon, 2004.; Murányi Kata: A gyarmati háborúk migrációinak hatása a portugál kultúrára a kreatív városok korában. Mediterrán Világ. 2016/37–38. 110–121.; Szilágyi István: Portugália a huszadik században. L’Harmattan Kiadó, Budapest, 2015. 15 Beatriz Padilla–Alejandra Ortiz: Fluxos migratórios em Portugal: do boom migratório à desaceleração no contexto de crise. Balanços e desafios. Revista Interdisciplinar de Mobilidade Humana. 2012/39. 180.