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Source of photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/
The European Union’s unique nature as a global actor has sparked extensive debate about its international role and influence. Traditionally viewed as a “civilian power,” as first conceptualized by François Duchêne in the 1970s, this perspective has faced significant challenges over the years. Two prominent frameworks have emerged to explain the EU’s approach: Ian Manners’ Normative Power Europe (NPE), which emphasizes promoting values such as democracy and human rights, and Chad Damro’s Market Power Europe (MPE), which highlights the EU’s focus on market-driven policies and regulatory influence.
This article explores how these competing frameworks align with the EU’s policies toward its Southern Neighbourhood, particularly the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. It argues that while the EU aspires to project its core values, its market-driven priorities shape its external policies, often at the expense of its normative ambitions. Indeed, the EU’s actions and agreements with the region reflect its focus on economic integration, regulatory convergence, and migration control, often outweighing its commitment to promoting democracy and human rights.
Understanding Normative Power Europe (NPE) and Market Power Europe (MPE)
Theories about the European Union’s global influence often depart from traditional notions of power rooted in military strength or territorial sovereignty. Instead, they focus on the EU’s unique identity and how it shapes its role on the international stage. Two prominent frameworks, Normative Power Europe (NPE) and Market Power Europe (MPE), offer contrasting perspectives on the EU’s external actions and interactions with third parties.
Ian Manners’ Normative Power Europe theory emphasises that the EU exerts influence by promoting fundamental values such as liberty, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These principles, referred to as “core norms,” along with additional values like sustainable development and good governance, are deeply embedded in the EU’s history, institutional framework, and political identity. According to Manners, the EU’s normative power stems from its ability to shape what is considered “normal” in international relations. Rather than relying on coercive force, the EU influences global behaviour through persuasion and emulation. It achieves this through mechanisms such as sharing information, offering procedural guidance, and facilitating cultural exchange. This approach underscores the EU’s distinctive ability to lead by example.
In contrast, Chad Damro’s Market Power Europe theory argues that the EU’s influence derives primarily from its economic might and regulatory expertise. As the world’s largest trading bloc, the EU wields significant material and institutional power, making access to its market highly desirable for third parties. The EU’s regulatory systems, backed by skilled agencies with enforcement authority, ensure the credibility and consistency of its policies. Damro highlights that the EU’s tools for externalising its norms often rely on conditionality, using both rewards, such as negotiating and concluding trade agreements and financial aid, and penalties, including sanctions or restricted market access, to achieve compliance. This economic and regulatory dominance, rather than normative ideals, drives much of the EU’s engagement with partner regions.
While Manners’ framework emphasises the EU’s role as a promoter of values and norms, Damro’s approach offers a pragmatic explanation of the EU’s influence, focusing on its ability to externalise rules and shape global markets. Together, these theories provide contrasting but complementary lenses through which to analyse the EU’s policies, particularly in its Southern Neighbourhood.
Normative Power Europe (NPE) in the Southern Neighbourhood
According to Manners’ conceptualisation, for the EU to be NPE, it must actively and inadvertently foster peace, democracy, and fundamental rights. This is frequently accompanied by a subconscious belief in the EU’s good intentions, yet the assessment of EU policies toward its surroundings is overwhelmingly negative.
First, assuming that the EU leads by ‘virtuous example’ in exporting its experiment in regional integration, and in light of the long-lasting bilateral relations between the two regions, one would expect a substantial improvement of the Southern Neighbourhood performance in the realm of human rights protection and democracy. However, not only is the MENA region deemed the least democratic area worldwide, but indexes of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law reveal a worrying lack of improvement. The region is, – still performing very poorly (Figure 1). Importantly, the human rights index maps show the situation back in 1995 (Figure 4), when the first Euro-Mediterranean partnership was established, and the current situation (Figure 5) demonstrating that the rapprochement between the two regions did not entail any great change in this realm conversely to what NPE would expect. Similarly, the rule of law index shows the lack of improvement and in some cases the worsening conditions in the region from 2015 to 2023 (Figures 2 and 3).
Figure 2 – Rule of Law Index 2015. Source: World Justice Project
Figure 3- Rule of Law Index 2023. Source: World Justice Project
Figure 4- Human Rights Index 1995. Source: Our World In Data
Figure 5- Human Rights Index 2022. Source: Our World In Data
Second, EU actions have consistently run counter to the underpinnings of Normative Power Europe. For instance, the EU’s claim to be an exporter of democracy has been severely weakened by its focus on security and stability, two milestones of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership aiming at creating a common area of peace and stability. This prioritisation frequently involves turning a blind eye to what the EU usually considers human rights abuses. This is evident in the enduring relations of the Union with authoritarian powers, as well as in the measures for the prevention of undesired migration regardless of human rights safeguarding like in the case of readmission agreements to unfairly declared “safe-third countries”. To a smaller extent, this trend also resonates with the EU’s preference for stability over reforms following the Arab Spring, which represented a valuable opportunity for encouraging -post-authoritarian rule transition.
Third, according to sociological institutionalism lenses, a policy cannot be considered NPE unless it is both inclusive and reflexive. In other words, an NPE policy may only be conceived as such if there is a fair degree of involvement of non-members and if it can adjust to the expected effects. However, even if the EU has become marginally more attentive to MENA-related challenges, its developmental philosophy has not altered. The recently discussed Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs), which aim to liberalise trade in services, government procurement, and agriculture, are an excellent example of a trade deal that may appear appealing to MENA countries, but whose revenues will mostly benefit the EU. Furthermore, EU policies towards its neighbourhood are more and more standardised resulting in a “one-size-fits-all” approach neglecting regional peculiarities.
Market Power Europe (MPE) in the Southern Neighbourhood
Altogether, while it is fair to say that the EU has been acting normatively through norm externalisation, the externalised rules and practices mostly focus on regulatory convergence and enhanced economic integration, as well as border control techniques to prevent undesirable immigration, rather than on democratic NPE values. Significantly, these rules and practices of cooperation are systematically presented through the tool of conditionalities, MPE’s main tool for coercive compliance, and are often non-negotiable, far from the smooth, partially unintentional norm externalisation practices of NPE.
In line with Demro’s recommendation, this contribution will examine both what the EU says —that is, the strategies it articulates to operate as MPE— and what the EU does to demonstrate how the EU’s actions in the Southern Neighbourhood resonate with this framework. First, the conceptualization embraces both the EU’s economic and social agendas, providing a compelling explanation for the interest-driven decisions of security prioritization while also considering the “mission civilisatrice” of the EU. Indeed, MPE’s deliberate externalization of norms and practices explains the former, whereas human rights-related conditionalities to trade agreements address the latter. Second, the MPE approach clarifies why the EU does not treat the advancement of democracy and human rights in MENA countries as its main priority. This is not to say that the EU does not foster democracy-building programs and development promotion policies in its neighbourhood. However, MPE explains why, as long as these actions are thought to potentially conflict with the EU’s main goals, i.e., stability, security, and economic prosperity, the EU will not engage significantly. This is even more so since the EU knows it can attain those core objectives even by working with oil and gas-rich autocratic governments, e.g., Algeria, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The latter is yet another interest-based decision that finds no justification under the NPE framework while it resonates with the EU’s market identity. Finally, Demro’s Market Power Europe successfully explains the EU’s reaction to the Arab Spring, which included calling for a weapons embargo in Libya and freezing the assets of the ruling élite in both Tunisia and Libya. As components of the regulatory framework permitting externalization, both of these negative conditionalities measures support the MPE argument of the EU sanctioning power. On the same line, EU regulatory character is further emphasized by the new DCFTAs, based on the EU’s acquis communautaire, which require an even more rigorous adoption of EU rules signalling the need for strict regulatory convergence by MENA states.
What the EU says: Since the early days of this partnership, the issued strategies reflected the domestic awareness of MPE. Looking at the wording of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership of 1995, the 2004 Neighbourhood Policy, the Union for the Mediterranean in 2008, and the new agenda for the Mediterranean 2021, this perception is anything but strengthened. The Barcelona Conference declared that the partnership was to be three-pronged: “a political and security partnership aimed at creating a common area of peace and stability an economic, and financial partnership designed to establish a common zone of prosperity, notably by gradually introducing free trade, and a social, cultural and human partnership designed to increase exchanges between the civil societies of the countries taking part” (Commission, 1997). Similarly, the European External Action Service (EEAS) highlights that the ENP was launched to foster stability, security, and prosperity in the EU’s neighbouring regions. Despite stressing that the partnership is based on shared values, the promotion of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights, and social cohesion, its joint priorities for cooperation are economic development for stabilization, security and migration, and mobility (EEAS). Also, the new Agenda for the Mediterranean, proposed in 2021, reveals a deep commitment to economic development. Indeed, it includes a dedicated Economic and Investment Plan to foster the socio-economic recovery in the Southern Neighbourhood in the long term.
Conclusion
The EU’s sui generis character makes it hard to define its international role. Initially categorized according to the civil/military power dichotomy, the understanding of its global stance has evolved, becoming increasingly related to its identity. Scholars have developed several conceptualizations of the “EU as a power” based on the characterization of its identity as derived from its core and minor rules or its single market. On the one hand, Manners’ NPE assumes that the EU functions normatively, shaping what is considered normal in the international arena by virtue of its unique existence (2002). Conversely, Demro’s Market Power Europe views the EU as a sizable single market with significant regulatory authority, allowing it to externalize its norms and practices through conditionalities (2012). This contribution contends that Market Power Europe offers a more accurate explanation of the EU’s approach in its Southern Neighbourhood, particularly compared to NPE. Indeed, EU actions and policy strategies show that the Union is far more committed to externalizing its market-related policies and regulatory measures rather than to transferring its core and minor norms onto others’ practices. The analysis, therefore, concludes that the EU’s normative action is not absent, but it is rather focused on interest-based priorities that contradict NPE’s presumptions, resonating instead with Market Power Europe’s underpinnings.
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