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In March 2015, the European external action service and the European commission launched a vast consultation “Towards a new European Neighbourhood Policy” through a “joint consultation paper” (EEAS 2015) which certainly is the best paper ever written by the Europe Union on the neighbourhood issue. It acknowledges that the ENP has largely failed, and that instead of the desired “circle of friends”, this area has turned into a circle of fire. The authors of this atlas certainly do not believe that a sole territorial approach to this issue could recover lost opportunities, and solve the amount of problems and misunderstandings; but they are convinced that it could be a part of the solution.

7.1 Synthesis: Are We Really “One Region”?

7.1.1 Rather “Shallow” than “Deep” Regional Integration

We have seen the low international openness of the Western Balkans and of the North African territories (except in northern Morocco) although their potential accessibility to the European territory is high. This suggests important avenues for territorial development there. As a whole, the neighbour countries have opened their economy in the two last decades. Many of their territories are ready for international connection and cooperation. Our analyses have stressed the strong international openness of Istanbul, and, in the Eastern neighbourhood, Moscow’s overarching dominance.

Nevertheless, European neighbourhoods remain peripheries of Europe. Relations in investment, trade, transport and migration are characterised by imbalances in many aspects. Europe is more important for neighbourhoods than the reverse. Neighbour countries, except Turkey and Russia, play a minor role in the international relations of European countries. The relation between neighbourhoods and Europe is imbalanced in its nature: high level services and products with medium and high technological content versus primary or low added value manufacturing goods; tourist flows versus migratory flows including highly qualified labour.

7.1.2 Rather Regional De-integration than Integration

Europe’s influence upon its neighbours is declining. There are two main ways to assess regional integration. The first way is the structural analysis of the considered countries: do neighbours more and more look like EU countries? Do they show potential complementarities? The ITAN project brings some answers at macro-regional, national and local scale. Demographic analysis displays clear results. Young people of the greater European region are concentrated in the Near East and North Africa. The elders are concentrated in Europe in a large sense, Eastern neighbourhood included. This demographic shift is striking: poorly managed, it could lead to conflicts between territories and perhaps countries confronted by a difficult transition, but, properly managed, it constitutes very favourable complementarity. One thing is obvious: both aging Europe and booming Mediterranean have to tackle high dependency ratios, in a context of insufficient jobs creation: this creates a de facto convergence of stakes. Moreover, as the demographic transition is deeply advanced in all of these neighbour countries, including the Arab countries, social structures and issues (“oldies boom” namely) are converging with that of the EU. That being said, the second section has compared the GDP per capita in the three major world regions; in the European region, the gap remains huge between Europe and its developing neighbours.

The second way is the geography of international exchanges. Neighbourhoods are important partners for Europe, reaching 7.5 % in trade of goods, 7 % of European air connections, absorbing 15 % of European development aid, providing 30 % of immigration towards Europe and providing one third of its energy supply. Moreover, we assess at 11 % the share of neighbourhoods in the potential growth market of Europe in the next decade. These figures nevertheless point to the importance of neighbourhoods for energy supply and as a source of labour force (or migratory threat depending on the perspective adopted) for Europe. This is compliant with the neighbourhood policy which, to date, has focused on energy trade, migration as well as in security matters. But neighbourhoods are hardly seen as major economic partners. This concurs with our result in the field of European media: economic newspapers are much less interested in neighbourhood issue than generalist newspapers, in particular in France and Spain; the first thing that interests European readers in the neighbourhoods is political instability. Obviously, Europeans under-estimate the potential economic role of the neighbourhoods (beyond energy procurements), and still more under-estimate the role of the economy in the political transition of the neighbour countries. Most figures in the second section illustrate the impressive economic growth of all the neighbourhoods (in a wider sense, the Middle East and Africa included) in the last decades. This is undeniably a potential major asset for Europe.

Nevertheless they also demonstrate the declining importance of the EU in neighbours’ flows: investment, trade, vessels movements, flight connections…. Another strategic issue, that of energy procurement, tells the same story: since the Algerian state has deliberately diversified the geography of its energy exports, Europe and the US now each account for around 40 % of Algerian energy exports in recent years. The reason is that the European Commission has given its preference to energy spot markets rather than to long-term supply. In the gas sector, this means liquefied gas delivery rather than pipelines; and this means a rising possibility for Algeria to sell its gas to the US, and lower opportunities for long-term industrial and technological cooperation with Europe to build gas pipelines.

7.1.3 Regional Integration by Transport and Energy Networks

The completion of networks on the scale of the greater region is a key issue for its integration. The energy network is being completed little by little. A Euro-Mediterranean electricity grid is about to be completed, but its capacity will have to be increased if the Mediterranean Solar Plan comes into force. In the Eastern neighbourhood, the energy network is far more complete; the issue here is the Russian power over European Eastern neighbours, due to the absence of a European energy policy. When it comes to transport, an important difference between transport networks in the EU and the neighbourhoods is transnational continuity. While there are almost no barriers for crossing countries in the EU, many neighbours have borders which are difficult to cross. The number of persons able to get access to in a 3-h time-span shows a great difference between western Europe and its outskirts. This suggests avenues for further regional integration through transport networks.

7.2 Reducing Risks and Fostering Opportunities with Neighbours

7.2.1 Promoting the Territorial Approach Is a Competitive Advantage for Europe in Its Neighbourhoods

The “Elements for a Common Strategic Framework 2014–2020” published by the European Commission (2013) provides a starting point toward policy orientations on the neighbourhoods. First because the text, in line with the recent re-orientation of the ENP, acknowledges that the neighbourhoods need further subsidies, with a substantial increase of the European Neighbourhood Instrument (which replaced the ENPI in January 2014). The text also recommends a better combination of EU’s financial funds for cohesion, social, regional, rural and maritime policies. This is of great significance for territorial issues, which are, as such, transversal issues. The territorial approach is very relevant when it comes to better articulate different funds and sectoral approaches.

Seen from their neighbourhoods, European countries are envied for their level of development and their genuine rule of law. But they are also seen as selfish countries, with double standards when it comes to applying their values elsewhere than in Europe, with low political influence and as US-followers in military affairs. Very few among the neighbouring populations know that the European countries are main providers of funding for development, build common networks with neighbour territories, have a major impact on a large array of actions: agriculture, environmental norms, training cooperation, local investment, etc. The territorial approach would help giving consistency to a wide set of European sectoral and financial actions which the neighbour local people are barely aware of. What is visible, in these countries, is the rising influence of extra-European major players. The territorial approach of cooperation for development is typically an area where the proximity (geographic, cultural, linguistic) of Europe brings a decisive advantage in the neighbourhoods vis-à-vis other global players.

Benefiting from this advantage would suppose giving concrete targets to European funds dedicated to the neighbourhoods, in order to avoid the scattering and lowly mobilising effects of the previous ones. The “Elements” text demands to “focus cooperation on key policy objectives”, which is good—but all official donors’ texts always recommend that. The problem is that the text opens a wide range of possible targets: human rights, fundamental freedoms, stronger growth, inclusive growth, economic integration into the EU internal market, prevention of conflicts, sectoral cooperation such as energy and climate change, support to civil society exchanges… We hope the coming lines could contribute to the selection of a smaller number of key objectives.

7.2.2 Ending with Dissymmetrical Relationship and with a Cooperation Driven by Aid

Europe’s action on its neighbourhoods has long been characterised by:

  1. 1.

    an overhanging asymmetrical manner of designing and implementing politics, whereas the ITAN report stresses on the future need for a partnership approach. This is what the sections on the Mediterranean neighbourhood clearly state, what the study of the Western Balkans shows, and this is what the on-going crisis in Ukraine demonstrates: without a symmetrical solid (including energy) partnership with Russia, no balanced European strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine is feasible;

  2. 2.

    subsidies as the key mean to fulfil the ENP’s objectives. Yes, the neighbours need subsidies to bridge the gap of basic infrastructure in the poor territories—of which there are many. Yes, a country like Tunisia needs strategic immediate, and very large, financial support (promised by the Deauville Partnership) in order to make its transition a success, because it would have a profound impact in the other Arab neighbour countries, and so as to avoid the destabilisation by Islamist foreign influence and by what will be long lasting Libyan unrest at the gates of Europe. But other financial means should be promoted by Europe, not only because they could bring complementary resources but because they suppose a renewed partnership, with:

    • more Public Private Partnership;

    • mobilisation of local savings: there is a lot a money even in “poor” neighbour countries, and this money could be invested in local projects based on local confidence rather than in national banks in which the nationals do not always trust;

    • international funds including sovereign funds from Arab states for instance, which suppose a way to label projects with a credible macro-regional dimension;

    • innovating funds, such as fees on Mediterranean maritime transit so as to find the necessary funding for sanitation in the Mediterranean partner countries;

    • higher importance of the productive system and participation of SMEs, so as to cope with what is happening in North America and East Asia. A way to promote it would be to dramatically enhance European granted loans as the best financial tool for territorial development in the neighbour economies. Most of these countries have economic actors that fit perfectly with loans rather than with subsidies, yet EIB and EDRB’s granted loans are not sufficient, in particular in the Mediterranean neighbourhood because their boards remain far from the Mediterranean culture, realities and needs.

7.2.3 Focusing on a Few Key Issues: Mobility, Energy, Agriculture, Water and Environment

The recent creation of the Partnership Instrument dedicated to supporting the external dimension of internal policies is very relevant—not because of its (in fact very limited) amount but because of what it implies on mind-sets. The envisaged themes of the Partnership Instrument are good: competiveness, migration (indeed nothing of the ENP’s goals will be really achieved as long as the Europeans retain the old “migration” pattern instead of the “professional mobility” pattern), and what the text relevantly calls “common major global challenges such as energy security, climate change and environment”. This last chapter gives concrete ideas of possible common (EU/neighbour countries) action in the field of these global challenges.

Last but not least, the EU's Elements for a common strategic framework (ESPON 2013) remind that Russia’s eligibility is retained in the new European Neighbourhood Instrument. The chapters on the Western Balkans, the Northern and the Eastern neighbourhoods have stressed the key role of Russia. This major neighbour, which is reconstructing an area of control over some of its former Soviet partners, has, at the same time, to be highly involved in the common regional neighbourhood (as it has very positively begun to be in the Northern Dimension and the Baltic Sea area), and to be kept at a distance in some specific sensitive issues. Of course this is geopolitics—but the chapter on the Northern neighbourhood has shown that neighbourhood issues are never far from Russian geopolitics. The neighbourhood issue will not succeed as long as the EU has not taken the option of behaving as a geopolitical player in its own region.

7.2.4 Promoting the ENP and the Notion of Greater Region (Europe + Neighbourhoods)

Crossing the local Human Development Index and FDI inflows, we have shown that many neighbour localities, mostly of the Mediterranean neighbourhood and particularly in Egypt, show dynamism but are not very, or not at all attractive for FDI. Over the three last decades, the European new member states have drastically reoriented their economic links toward western Europe instead of the former Soviet bloc; but the reverse is true for all the European neighbourhoods. Thus, we draw the following lesson: EU membership is a driver to economic regional integration whereas a neighbourhood status comes down to declining integration with Europe. This calls for a reformulated ENP.

Some (rare) neighbour economies move from a peripheral position, mainly selling primary goods, toward specialisation in low added-value manufacturing goods: Turkey and Tunisia are the best examples. This means that economic transition is possible, and that it is on-going in some of these countries. Europe should strongly back this productive transformation, because it is a structural driver for political and social transition.

7.2.5 Reformulating the Neighbourhoods Vision Thanks to European Policies Cross-Cutting

Several European policies should be further cross-cut with the Neighbourhood Policy.

European Cohesion policy: the stake is to transfer to the neighbourhoods the European know-how in the field of territorial planning, regional policy and cross-border cooperation. It is particularly important in the cases of Turkey and Tunisia which happen to be the most unbalanced national territories, but not only there. Among others, the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange instrument (TAIEX) is an accurate tool for territorial cooperation in the following fields:

  • the decentralisation issue, but also the state de-concentration issue as an indispensable counterpart to decentralisation,

  • the modernisation of the state and of the governance via local territories and national planning, and the rising participation of local civil society,

  • the role of territories in public-private cooperation,

  • the rising importance of Geographic Indication in agriculture and of short supply circuits,

  • the promotion of decentralised cooperation; the need to better focus on neighbour territories the European scattered decentralised cooperation,

  • the promotion of international networks of territorial actors (e.g. ports, whose networks are effective in the Baltic Sea Region but not in the Black Sea or the Mediterranean Regions).

The reasons for cross-cutting Cohesion and Neighbourhood policies are many:

  • The inclusive growth concern. It is a stake at many scales: locally because of the poor quality of development, access to universal services such as water, and popular participation in governance; at a national scale because regional disparities are rising; at the scale of the greater European region where the discontinuities are not sustainable.

  • The urbanisation concern. The Mediterranean neighbour countries are experiencing a rapid urbanisation process as well as an economic transition with severe contrasts between developing areas and left behind territories.

  • The minority concern. A major threat of the neighbourhoods is related to the minority issue (Balanche 2012). Such concern is very difficult to address by the considered states, for sensitive political reasons. But a good territorial approach could help. That is what the Moroccan state does through its regionalisation policy, in particular in its southern regions, which helps with solving the “Western Sahara” concern. Many exchanges of experiences, methods and tools could be developed in the greater European region.

Common Agricultural Policy: the food security issue is one of the most sensitive in the Mediterranean, thus a key aspect of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. Yet, we saw that it has been poorly addressed, and that the perspective of a straight liberalisation of food trade could generate short-term profit for European stakeholders but long term threats for the entire region.

  • Avenues for European cooperation stem from the CAP methods. They deal with (i) encouraging more local food production; (ii) promoting rural development, in the spirit of the “LEADER” methodology; (iii) promoting the Mediterranean diet and developing geographic labels; (iv) re-allocating some production between the North and the South of the Mediterranean (wheat would better grow on the northern side, whereas three-quarters of Moroccan farmers grow wheat; fruits would better grow on the southern side); (v) creating regional food security.

  • Such regional food security would take advantage of embracing the greater region, so as to benefit from Ukrainian and Russian production. Food is increasingly becoming a globalised product, with very long trading routes and rising speculation on prices in global financial areas. This is not socially, financially and environmentally sustainable. Food cannot be left to global gamblers. Here, a clear commercial regional preference is at stake. This is the overarching condition to promoting geographical labels, food quality and security, protection of environment of local territories: could these collective preferences not be set up at the scale of the greater European region? To European stakeholders, this would guarantee the enormously rising markets of the Mediterranean neighbours, whereas the latter buy their food from more and more remote sellers, outside Europe. But the condition is to end with a partnership limited to free trade and to make a choice for an ambitious productive partnership between Europe and its neighbours—that is, regional deep integration.

Transport policy: increasing accessibility is a condition for regional integration and market enlargement.

  • All the chapters dealing with a neighbourhood regard transport as a bottleneck for local development and better interaction with the EU. In the Northern neighbourhood it is the very condition of development. In the Eastern neighbourhood, the increase of economic exchanges with the EU is hampered by the inadequacy of border and transportation infrastructure; particularly difficult are the problems on the roads connecting central areas of Russia with the ports of Baltic countries and Finland. In the Western Balkans bad transport infrastructure and insufficient internal transnational cooperation lower these countries’ international openness. In the Mediterranean the Euromed Transport Forum had conducted a very good regional transport action plan, but its capacity to improve transnational facilities seems to be declining. For all these reasons, the TEN-T policy should adopt further reactivation towards the neighbourhoods.

  • Another reason is to be put forward. Transport is typically a long term perspective. It appears that all the neighbours, to a different degree, are lacking long term vision. A perspective of a common transport (and energy) network would spread the culture and the practice of forecasting in these countries, instead of the prevailing short term approach.

Energy policy: the potential for energy collaboration in the region is enormous. It could be the basis of an ambitious social (employment), industrial, technological and environmental partnership.

  • The European Union is barely managing to reduce its dependence upon Russia. Russia is developing new pipelines to bypass Ukraine, which would secure stability of energy exports to the EU and avoid dependence on transit countries, but it also weakens Ukraine.

  • The huge rise of energy demand in the Southern neighbourhood could be a fantastic opportunity for European enterprises, but it could also be a threat if this boom is managed with low energy efficiency and high greenhouse gas emissions, and if extra-European players take advantage of these booming markets.

  • This has also a territorial side: the electricity grids are to be major infrastructures for the coming years; in particular, rural development will not be possible if these territories are not provided with electricity supply. When it comes to gas, the Algerian, but also its neighbours’ territorial future will not be the same if Algeria develops liquefied gas facilities, or gas pipelines; the type of partnership that Europe will choose with Algeria will have long-term territorial consequences.

  • In all neighbourhoods, addressing these territorial energy issues requires a European energy policy to be set up. Its scope should immediately take the neighbourhoods into account, which would make things easier because several neighbours are energy producers. Such an ambitious prospect will never come into force if Europe keeps a merely trading approach to the energy issue.

Environment policy: issues are much diversified in such a vast area—climate change, floods and droughts, pollution, energy transition…

  • It is impossible to address the neighbourhood issue if one does not take into account the environmental dimension; it is impossible to address the European environment issue if one does not take into account the neighbourhoods. Pollution is about contiguity: here, proximity—that is to say neighbourhood—is highly relevant.

  • The numerous earthquakes in the Mediterranean and the historic tsunamis prove that it remains at stake. This calls for a cooperation between Europe and its neighbours (which has largely begun, for instance between Greece and Turkey) in the three domains of (i) common alert system, training and exchanges of experiences; (ii) actual concerted crisis management; (iii) post-crisis reconstruction.

  • Climate change will highly impact the neighbourhoods, especially in the Northern neighbourhood, in the Black Sea area and in the Mediterranean. The water shortage will particularly impact Egypt. Today, the water resources per capita are worrisome in the Mediterranean as a whole, especially in the South but also in Spain: the water issue is not only a neighbour concern.

  • The coming ENP should pay great attention to the water issue. It is not only an environmental stake. It is also about management, since know-how is lacking in both governance and technical aspects. It is political, since the modernisation of the water service would need an increase of water tariffs that neighbour governments can hardly assume. It is financial, since the need for modernisation of the water and above all of the sanitation infrastructure remains huge. It is social, since many neighbours are lacking a sufficient water and sanitation service. Water is the best example of indispensable cross-cutting policies, and of relevance of the territorial approach.

A policy that would not be dedicated to “migration” but to “mobility”: this is another issue encountered in all the neighbourhoods. Replacing the “migration” pattern (driven by administrative concern) by the “professional mobility” pattern (driven by economic growth) could follow the path of:

  • visa-free cross-(EU) border movement between labelled persons (e.g. professionals belonging to Euro-Mediterranean networks recognized by the EU) and local communities (e.g. nationals of neighbour countries in the Western Balkans), so as to contribute to economic and cultural exchanges

  • visa-free cross-(EU) border movement between labelled professionals, for example people who belong to transnational professional networks recognised by European bodies (Euromed Postal, business organisations…)

  • win-win brain gain between the neighbours and Europe, so as to avoid losing skilled workers who believe that they are better welcomed in Canada, in the US and now in the large emerging countries than in Europe. Given the growing role of diasporas in the economy and culture, it is important for European public opinion and politicians to consider migrants in a renewed way: they used to be all too often regarded as a social problem (integration, education…), they should rather be regarded as a solution now that their education level is raising. The people who live in western Europe as foreigners increasingly come from the neighbourhoods, namely the Mediterranean one, and from Sub-Saharan Africa which is a lengthening of the European area of influence. This is an asset to rely on, given the foreseen development of Africa in the coming century—which for the moment mostly benefits world players other than Europe.

7.3 Towards a “Neighbourhoods Territorial Agenda”

The EU has hitherto financed a large number of studies and programmes in the neighbour countries, but a global vision is lacking. A territorially integrated perspective could add value to these scattered initiatives on trade, transport, energy, agriculture, environment, etc. It could be a relevant tool for cooperation, driving towards a common vision that might be shared by EU countries and their neighbours.

7.3.1 Why?

A Neighbourhoods Territorial Agenda (NTA) would meet several needs:

  • a need for up-to-date territorial multi-actors multi-scale governance, because most of the stakes have, at the same time, a macro-regional, a national and a local scale. A macro-regional territorial scheme fits with the wide vision enhanced by the UfM, the Northern Dimension or the EaP. A vision of territorial stakes and structural projects is one of the rare issues that could be shared by the various regional bodies such as the OSCE, the League of Arab States, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the African Union. When it comes to the local scale, it is the relevant one in the field of local essential services such as access to water and sanitation, education and health. A spatial vision and good practices for territorial development can be shared and exchanged; who could believe that such sharing could easily occur in the fields of religion, culture or politics?

  • A need for a cross-cutting approach of the various European projects and funds, and a need for better interaction between policies dedicated to the EU’s territory/and those dedicated to neighbours in order to support the external dimension of EU internal policies, as has been said above.

  • For each non-EU country a need (i) to design a long term vision (since territorial development necessarily means long term) instead of usual short-termism, and (ii) to improve coordination between the various public producers of data on local territories (a national prerogative for sure, but which can sometimes be better implemented in the framework of an international cooperation).

7.3.2 What?

The contents could be:

  • Territorial policies in non-EU countries common to, or derived from, EU policies

    The region needs a synthetic view of all policies launched by the EU and each of its member states, which have a significant impact on the neighbour territories. Nowhere, except maybe in the field of Mediterranean transport thanks to the Euromed Transport Forum, are the policies of France, Spain, Germany etc. analysed through their territorial impact in the neighbourhoods. Even at the EU’s level, for the moment it is difficult to know how much money, according to what policies, in which precise territory, the different European bodies have spent in the neighbourhoods.

  • Infrastructural projects so as to facilitate exchanges and thus regional integration

    This would be the central part of the Agenda. It would promote all projects of interest for the greater region. If we take the case of transport, this is what the Euromed Transport Forum did for the Mediterranean. This work should be reactivated, and further implemented for all the countries of the region. If we take the example of water and sanitation, the NTA should remind the main common principles; the main projects of interest for the region should be identified, labelled, financially supported, mapped and widely released. Some of these items already exist but not all of them, and they are scattered throughout a large number of documents, web sites, databases, hardly released and never cross-cut. Moreover, regional integration by key infrastructures fits perfectly with the necessary extension of the neighbourhoods’ scope in particular toward sub-Saharan Africa.

  • Common governance of common public goods

    The quality of water of the common seas, the preservation of Northern resources, civil protection issues related to natural and industrial hazards, and other transnational common goods of key interest for the greater region’s territories, would be the third piece of the Agenda. Such transnational common governance would be in line with the strategy for a regional deep integration.

7.3.3 How?

  • The Agenda has first to be a shared process. This is the condition for further ownership and visibility. Shared by whom? Figure 7.1 provides an overview, and suggests possible multi-level governance. The main idea is that the process should bring together bodies from the EU and from the partner countries. Whatever the process timeline, the priority should be the participation of bodies belonging to a significant number of countries of the region, with parity between EU and non-EU countries.

    Fig. 7.1
    figure 1

    Stakeholders of a neighbourhoods territorial agenda

    Full size image

  • When it comes to European stakeholders, “shared” also means shared by the EU’s bodies and by member states. The new design of the ENP implies a much better coordination between the EU and member states.

  • The precondition of success is a common platform for territorial local data. Without territorial comparable data, no shared vision of our common region can emerge. Some research and operational projects have targeted territorial analysis of this vast world region, but methods remain numerous, data heterogeneous and findings scattered. A common tool for territorial data would meet two needs: (i) helping coordinate the various projects dedicated to integrated territorial geometries and databases of the greater region, (ii) steering collaborative work between experts and decision makers on shared spatial tools for decision-making, and build interfaces with territorial stakeholders.

    This “Local Data Platform” would have following tasks: update territorial delineations at the greater region scale; set up metadata models and sustainable local databases, compliant with EU databases, so as to ease integrated and comparable territorial analyses; harmonise local data (harmonisation of indicators’ definition, of spatial geometries, of temporal discrepancies) and disseminate them according to the open data approach.

    The platform would respect two principles. The first is participation of research networks and public (national-international) bodies dedicated to territorial data and analysis. The second is parity between EU and non-EU countries of the region.