Assessing the policies of the EU in the Middle East Peace Process in the post-Lisbon Era A neo-realist analysis

2009 witnessed the entry into force of the new Lisbon Treaty, after a long and troubled ratification. This new text, that was the necessary institutional compromise to cover the political vacuum following the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, supposedly provided the EU with indispensable tools to act internationally. The new document was widely presented by scholars and politicians (Chopin & Lefebvre, 2010, p.2) as an innovative text, that would have improved the effectiveness of action of the EU on the global scene. Although this Treaty has undeniably affected the political capabilities of the EU, in practice it has not massively changed its policies or its coherence of action towards the case study of this analysis: the Middle East Peace Process
The Middle Eastern conflict has always been considered as one of the longest and most important conflicts in the world. Geographically close to Europe, the instability in the Middle East might negatively influence the European neighbours – notably the Arab States -, and indirectly the political solidity of the European Union. Due to its geo-political importance, the Middle East was included both in the European Neighbourhood Policy (EEAS official website) and in the Barcelona Process (EEAS official website) – and consequently in the Union for the Mediterranean in 2008 – in an attempt to normalise the area. It is moreover worth noting that the EU has expressed that the Middle Eastern conflict is considered to be the cause of any instability in the region (EEAS, Delegation in Israel – Official Website; Ashton, 2010, p.2). For these reasons, the study of the EU policies towards the resolution process of this historical conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians may be significant.
The principal research problem of this analysis will be to explain the continuity of the EU policies towards the MEPP before and after the Lisbon Treaty. The research will ask why the EU policies have not changed following the Lisbon Treaty, and why the EU still appears to be a secondary actor in the area. In this thesis, it will be questioned that the Lisbon Treaty has modified the role of the EU on the MEPP -.
Chronologically, this research will consider 2009 as a turning point year. On the one hand, the entry into force of the Treaty formally provided the EU with the means to improve the coherence of its external action. Through the establishment of the new European External Action Service, and the new post of the High Representative, who is also the Vice President of the Commission, the EU was presumed to be able to act in a better way at a global level. The most organisational innovation brought by the Lisbon Treaty is that the HR is now responsible for "all areas of foreign policy" (TEU article 24.1). In the same year the Council of the European Union adopted a set of declarations in its conclusions that represent the basis on which further policy towards the conflict in Middle East in the post-Lisbon era would be constructed. Indeed, in this document the Council – and as a consequence the European Union – reiterated the politically most important ends that the EU should pursue in the MEPP.
It is important to understand why the EU has not been able to exploit the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, in order to have at least some influence on the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. After this analysis, it will be clear that the EU still has great deficiencies to proceed as a single actor in the MEPP, even after the modifications of the Lisbon Treaty.
This importance of this analysis lies in the fact that it will give us the opportunity to study the influence of the EU in the MEPP. It will also help to evaluate the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on the EU coherence of action and effectiveness in the MEPP. For this reason, it seems logical to analyse the EU policies before and after Lisbon and to consider 2009 as a turning point moment in order to demonstrate continuity of the European action. Moreover, the originality of the thesis lies on the fact the analysis of the EU policies will be developed under three point of view: The EU as a declaratory actor, the EU as a diplomatic actor and the EU as a crisis manager.