Understanding the Continuity and Change in the European Union’s Policies on the Mediterranean and the MENA Region after the Arab “Spring” Uprisings

The literature on traditional and critical security studies mostly point out at a paradigm shift concerning the nature of security threats and challenges either caused or impacted upon by state, non-state, and transnational actors. From a security perspective, the European Union (EU) has been one of the most influential actors in its southern neighborhood covering the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and North Africa (MENA) regions particularly due to its active foreign policy influence mechanisms including European Strategy, European Neighborhood Policy, and most recently through its Global Strategy. Nonetheless, the EU foreign policies in the MENA region after the Arab uprisings have not been very successful in terms of promoting social, political, and economic stability and cooperation; and thus, it achieved mixed results instead of integrated outcomes. This paper addresses the difficulties and expectation-capability gaps in the EU’s foreign policies in the Middle East with a particular emphasis on the changing security structure and threats in the post-Arab Spring period. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the effectiveness of the Union’s regional strategies through the evaluation of its policies on volatile regions such as the Middle East