Regionalism

5.1 Regionalism

According to Federica Bicchi, the EU has consistently promoted regionalism and followed a regional approach in its agreements and relations with non-European third countries all over the globe – with the exception of EU-US bilateral relations (Bicchi 2006

: 287-288). This rather consistent policy across time and space and in spite of regional divergences strongly indicates that it follows an organizational norm rather than functional considerations. This is particularly evident with regard to regional policies addressing “regions” that have few objective regional characteristics (such as high density of transactions) and do not conceive of themselves as regional communities – such as the “Mediterranean” or the Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries. Rather, they are constituted as “regions” mainly by EU policy (Bicchi 2006

: 288).

As Jean Grugel argues in a comparative analysis of EU and US policy vis-à-vis Latin America, this regionalism is also distinctively European. First, relations are discursively constructed as “inter-regional partnerships”, “based around notions of equity and cooperation that ignores or transcends the underlying power inequalities” (Grugel 2004 : 607-608). Second, the EU “has developed a conscious political leg to its new regionalism”, absent from US-sponsored free-trade associations, built around “the promotion of its own model of democracy, social welfare, and regional integration”, understood as subregional integration within Latin America (Grugel 2004 : 616).

If the EU’s promotion of regionalism has been consistent and distinctive, has it been isomorphic as well? That is, have regional arrangements created and supported by the EU been modeled on the EU example and have they been similar to each other? First, the great variety of interregional cooperation arrangements seems to contradict the expectation of isomorphism (for an overview, see Alecu de Flers and Regelsberger 2005 ). Second, there seems to be disagreement with regard to the assessment of specific arrangements. For instance, whereas Bicchi argues that the institutional settings and governance regimes of the EU and its Mediterranean policy (EMP) are highly similar to international governance with regard to its multilateral institutional framework, the emphasis on “economic matters but with a social flavour”, and the “eurocentric” transfer of the Justice and Home Affairs agenda to the EMP (Bicchi 2006 : 295-298), Joffé (2001 ) and Alecu de Flers and Regelsberger (2005 : 323) point to the fact that the Barcelona process has been modeled on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) rather than on the EU’s own set-up.

The region that the EU seems to regard as most promising with regard to isomorphic regionalism is Latin America (in particular its Southern Cone), which is the culturally most similar world region and one which has a common market project (Mercosur) that might develop along European lines (Grugel 2004 : 616). Here, the EU seeks to spread its ideas of regional integration and good governance through “research funding, seminar programmes, and the creation of a fund to provide for the regular exchange of ideas within Latin America, in imitation of its own policies” (Grugel 2004 : 612).

Interestingly, however, it is the African Union (AU – designed in 2000) that mirrors the EU most closely in institutional terms – with its Parliament, Commission, Executive Council of Ministers, Court of Justice, and plans for a common currency. The use of the EU template in this case seems to have been a case of lesson-drawing or imitation rather than EU conditionality or socialization. However, the apparently supranational set-up of the AU is not matched by supranational competences for these institutions (Farrell 2007 : 312).

Unintended effects of the EU’s presence rather than the impact of the intentional promotion of regionalism seem to have occurred in other regions or sub-regions as well. Christopher Hill and Michael Smith point out that “the need to deal with a rich and powerful EU draws other states into cooperative ventures, especially in their international relations” (Hill and Smith 2005 : 396, their italics) and list the South African Development Committee as well as the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) as examples. Whereas, however, the EU might have unintentionally triggered regional cooperation in these cases, the cooperation schemes did not follow the EU model of regionalism.

Both Thomas Christiansen et al. (2000 ) and Anne Myrjord (2003 ) point out the ambivalent effects of the EU on regional institutions and region-building in the adjacent regions. On the one hand, EU neighborhood policies have reduced the divisive effects of enlargement and “minimized the importance of the institutional boundary between the Union and its environment”. They represent “a turn towards an inclusive form of conducting EU external policy” and give non-member countries a say in EU policy-making (Myrjord 2003 : 251; see also Christiansen et al. 2000 : 412). On the other hand, however, the often bilateral framework of negotiations between the EU and third states tends to undermine the model of multilateral regional integration that the EU seeks to promote, and external governance arrangements can only partially offset the disruptive effects of the EU’s differentiation between members, candidates, and non-candidates in its neighboring regions (Christiansen et al. 2000 : 407, 412). This finding is supported in the study by Diez et al. (2006 ), which claims that EU borders that coincide with existing border conflicts exacerbate rather than mitigate these conflicts.

In addition, “an emerging dependence on relatively strong EU financial instruments carries the potential of crowding out existing regional initiatives” (Myrjord 2003 : 252). This effect will, of course, depend on the existence and strength of endogenous region-building developments. Whereas in the Baltic and Nordic regions, where such region-building efforts seem to have been relatively well developed, the EU may have had an overall disruptive effect, in the Mediterranean, “even the limited efforts of the EU to generate multilateralism constitute the main driving force in an externally directed region-building effort” (Christiansen et al. 2000 : 412).

With regard to Africa, Hurt is equally sceptical: “The history of regional integration projects within the ACP group, especially in Africa, is one of consistent failure to achieve meaningful integration and development.” Moreover, the six new regions defined in the Cotonou Agreement¹ of 2002 are “externally imposed and do not in most cases correspond to existing regional organizations” (Hurt 2003 : 173).

In sum, the promotion of regionalism has indeed been a consistent and distinctive feature of EU external relations. In addition, the presence of the EU, its success in regional integration, and its importance as an economic actor have served as a model and triggered regional cooperation schemes in other parts of the world. Both conditionality and lesson-drawing/imitation seem to have been at work in these processes. Yet the scope and design of these schemes are extremely diverse and bear at best superficial resemblance to the EU. In addition, the actual policy of the EU toward and in these regional arrangements seems at times to undermine rather than strengthening regionalism beyond the EU.