The EU's Group-to-Group Dialogue with the Southern Mediterranean and ASEAN – How much have they achieved? A Comparative Analysis. EU Centre Singapore Working Paper No, 18, December 2013

Four decades of the EU's group-to-group dialogues with the Southern Mediterranean grouping of countries and with ASEAN have produced different dynamics and outcomes, despite the EU’s common strategy to use economic soft power to achieve their goals for the partnerships. Diverging conditions in the two regions created inconsistency in the EU's application of the common approach. The EU's neighbourhood security concerns forced it to relax its political stand with their Southern Mediterranean partners. For ASEAN, geographical distance dilutes the EU’s security concerns it that region and has afforded the EU to be more ideological and assertive on democracy and human rights practices. These issues have provoked disagreements in EU-ASEAN dialogues, but both sides have also tried to remain pragmatic in order to achieve some progress in the partnership. In contrast, the protracted the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to hamper the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue, resulting in little progress. Social upheavals in the Southern Mediterranean also brought their partnership to a standstill. The EU's cooperation with former authoritarian regimes like Libya and Syria have only caused damage to its credibility in the Southern Mediterranean, and future Euro-Mediterranean dialogues are likely to be affected by it.

State (un)Sustainability in the Southern Mediterranean and Scenarios to 2030: The EU’s Response. MEDPRO Policy Paper No. 1/August 2011(updated April 2012)

This research project is the product of a conviction, corroborated by the events that have overwhelmed the Arab world since December 2010, that sustainability is essential to any understanding of Mediterranean politics. Sustainability has too often been confused with stability in policy debates in the region and in the West. Not only are these two concepts distinct, with sustainability being broader and deeper than stability, but stability, as interpreted with regard to the regimes in the region, has often run counter to the very conditions that underpin state sustainability. Believing and thus pursuing regime stability has ultimately acted to the detriment of a more organic understanding of state sustainability.

Russia's policy in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia. OSW Study 23/2006

The Southern Caucasus and Central Asia are priority areas for the foreign policy of the Russian Federation. Russia mainly sees its influence in both regions as an important factor determining its international stature, and as a precondition for reinforcing its position as a world power. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also important for Russia from the points of view of economy, especially because of those area's natural resource wealth, and security, as both regions generate serious potential threats to the Russian Federation, including Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, the drugs trade and illegal migration.

The ICC Debate and the EU-U.S. Struggle for Influence: The Case of the Balkan-6. ACES Working Paper No. 11, October 2007

The objectives of the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) for the countries of the Balkan region are generally assumed to be complementary. They both stress and condition their support and assistance on the progress that these countries make with regards to economic modernization, build-up of social institutions, and respect for international law. However, this rhetoric doesn't always match the facts on the ground. Often, instead of dealing with a cohesive set of policy recommendations, the countries in the region are faced with contradictory alternatives and zero-sum choices. The debate over the development of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was such a case. It centered on whether the countries in the region should exempt US personnel from the jurisdiction of the Court while in the country and thus rendering them immune from prosecution for any crimes committed for which the US courts were not willing or able to take any action. The final outcome was mixed. Three of the countries - Croatia, Serbia (and Montenegro), and Slovenia - decided not to give in to US pressure, while the remaining three - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia - ignored the pleas and threats of the EU and of the various international non-governmental organizations and decided to sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) with the US. How can one explain such divergent outcomes? I argue that the credibility of actors involved played an important role in determining whether threats coming from the US or the EU were more credible, thus tipping the scales in favor of signing BIAs with the US. However, the issue of threat credibility serves only to narrow down the choices of actors. Further determination of the outcome necessitates a look at the nature of the security context in which these countries exist and operate.

Energy Efficiency: Trends and Perspectives in the Southern Mediterranean. MEDPRO Technical Report No. 21/December 2012

This paper has two objectives. First, it attempts to establish the potential of policies on energy efficiency and energy demand-side management in the southern Mediterranean region. Second, by examining past trends in energy intensity and trends up to 2030, it analyses the prospects and costs of such policies, compared with expected developments in the price of energy resources. Based on both analyses (MEDPRO WP4) and on prospects for growth (MEDPRO WP8), it seems that energy intensity in the Mediterranean should fall perceptibly by approximately 13% in the next 20 years. But given the programmed energy mix, this will not limit emissions of CO2, which are likely to increase by more than 90%. The paper first presents the rationale for demand-side management (DSM) policies. After a general discussion of concepts, it tackles the question of instruments and measures for implementing such policies, before posing the question of the cost-efficiency approach for monitoring the measures the authorities introduce. Secondly, the paper assesses energy consumption and energy efficiency in the countries of the southern Mediterranean and the ways in which their main economic sectors have changed in recent decades. The third section outlines the demand management measures introduced and, taking Tunisia and Egypt as examples, estimates the cost of such policies. The fourth and last section offers a forecast analysis of energy consumption in the Mediterranean up to 2030, highlighting probable trends in terms of final consumption, energy intensity, energy mix and emissions of CO2. The section concludes with estimates in terms of cost, comparing objectives for lower intensity, results in terms of resource savings and the types of costs this approach represents.