Explaining Foreign Policy: Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom in Times of French- Inspired Euro-Mediterranean Initiatives

Abstract

  The agreement reached at the European Council summit of March 2008 to establish a Union for the Mediterranean is not the result of a collective evaluation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and thus not based on a true needs assessment. Instead, it is the consequence of a complex web of interstate interaction processes and of the joint, informally orchestrated opposition of non-Mediterranean EU governments to unilateral French efforts to establish an exclusive cooperation framework. By going beyond the static concept of traditional foreign policy analysis and drawing on constructivist-inspired arguments, complex interdependence and elements of intergovernmentalist theories, this article aims at analysing from a theory-informed angle the foreign policies of Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom vis-à-vis the Mediterranean region in general and French President Nicolas Sarkozy's original plan to create a Mediterranean Union in particular. The analysis does not only show that the outcome of this struggle between France and mainly Germany and non-Mediterranean EU member states, such as Poland and the United Kingdom, generated counter-productive results and considerably eroded the foundations of Euro-Mediterranean relations. It also demonstrates the usefulness of bringing IR theory to the analysis of Euro-Mediterranean politics.