Explaining EU hegemony toward the Mediterranean: theory deficits through the negligence of natural resources.

Explaining EU hegemony toward the Mediterranean: theory deficits through the negligence of natural resources In the mid 90s, as part of the globalization process, EU states started to intensify their efforts to create new opportunities for investment and trade in the Mediterranean region. To that effect they launched the so-called Barcelona process with its centerpiece of an Economic Free Trade Area between EU and Mediterranean Barcelona participants. According to neo-liberal theory the economic liberalization of the Mediterranean would be of mutual benefit to both parties involved: investment and free trade would foster the region’s economic development, would reduce poverty and generate stability. Particularly investment in the Maghreb countries would be very attractive for European business in view of the region’s availability of cheap labour, favorable investment conditions and access to new markets. Critics of globalization and neo-liberalism, however, in particular Neo-Gramscians, consider the EU Barcelona process as an instrument of the EU elite for incorporating the Mediterranean region in their hegemonic bloc, to the profit of the EU and Mediterranean elite and at the expense of the Mediterranean ordinary population. Now, eight years after the launching of this initiative, it seems that the critics of globalization got it right: the living conditions of the populations of most of the Maghreb countries have not improved, in some countries they even worsened. But a close look at the reasons for the worsening living conditions of some Maghreb countries suggests that the reality is more complex than the theory is capable to grasp. While there is no doubt that EU companies profit from the unilateral trade between both regions, and that deregulation and privatization programs have already had their devastating effects, investment in labor intensive sectors is not taking place and is not expected to start off any time soon. So far the biggest share of the otherwise little EU investment in the Maghreb is taken up by a sector which Neo-Gramscian have difficulties to explain: investment in Algerian and Egyptian energy sector with the prospect of significant expansion in future. But as a Marxist approach the neo-Gramscian one has little regard for the role of natural resources in the economic process and for the fact that in contrast to the abundant availability of cheap labor, we are confronted with the limits of some critical natural resources. Therefore, empirical research led by Neo-Marxist theory would miss important motives for the EU’s consolidation of a hegemonic bloc with the Mahgreb countries’ elites: EU governments’ concern about energy supply dependencies and European energy companies’ objective in accessing the region’s cheaply extracted natural resources. Recognition of such a different form of EU exploitation of the Maghreb countries’ wealth would be imperative for a successful political strategy to improve the conditions in these poverty-stricken countries. While a Neo-Marxist approach in principle is well suited to explain the dynamics of the Euro-Mediterranean process, this paper will argue that important undercurrents of this partnership are left unexplained by the Neo-Gramscian theory, if it does not shed its orthodox Marxist tenet of ignoring nature and the constrains set by the limits of nature. The paper will start to discuss the general negligence of nature in IR theory in the age of globalization and will discuss - as Daniel Deudney has put it - how to bring nature back in. The empirical part is going to highlight the importance of the role of energy in Euro-Mediterranean relations and in particular the energy import dependencies of the European Union from Maghreb countries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]