Northern Europe and the Making of the EU's Mediterranean and Middle East Policies

What drives European foreign policy towards the wider Mediterranean and Middle East region? This collection takes an innovative approach to answering this question, by considering the impact of intra-European divisions on European polices towards this crucial region. European foreign policy has traditionally been defined by a clear division of labour: southern European member states take the lead in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, while central and northern European countries drive policies in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood. The resulting north-south split has entrenched geo-clientalistic behaviour as a core principle of EU foreign policy-making and has fuelled a static intra-European competition over influence and resources. However, as European power dynamics shift, these old divisions no longer hold and northern and central European countries have been pushed towards a more pro-active role in the region. But what factors are shaping the foreign policies of these countries in the Mediterranean and Middle East? What has been their contribution to common EU polices? And does their growing activism signal an end to old geo-clientalistic division as a core driver of European foreign policy?

Dr Timo Behr has been a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki from 2009-2013, where he acted as a project leader for FIIA’s research project on the Middle East and North Africa. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in International Relations from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He is the author of several articles and book chapters on Middle Eastern politics, the Arab Spring, Euro-Mediterranean relations, and EU foreign policy. Timo currently works as an adviser to several governance entities in the Middle East. Dr Teija Tiilikainen is the director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and editor-in-chief of Ulkopolitiikka magazine. Previously Dr Tiilikainen worked as the director of the Network for European Studies at the University of Helsinki (2003-2008) and as State Secretary in the Finnish Foreign Ministry (2007-2008).