EU Policies towards Egypt: The Civil Security Paradox

The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) organised a conference in Montreux, Switzerland from 2 to 4 April 2014 to examine the relationship between the armed forces and citizens of Egypt. DCAF brought together leading experts on civil-military relations from four continents, including former members of armed and security forces, academics, politicians, and representatives of the media and civil society. To provide a conceptual baseline for the discussions, DCAF commissioned research papers for presentation at the conference, some of which will be published. During the conference, the participants reviewed the current state of civil-military relations in Egypt and related challenges. Following an overview of the key role that the Egyptian Armed Forces have played in Egyptian politics for over 60 years, the participants turned to in-depth analysis of several critical issues in civil-military relations.

The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), created in 1992 and directed by Stefano Bartolini since September 2006, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research and to promote work on the major issues facing the process of integration and European society.

European Foreign Affairs Review, 2019

The European Union (EU) was unsure how to react to the 2013 military coup in Egypt. It had pledged to end unconditional cooperation with despotic rulers in its Southern neighbourhood, but deemed a popular military regime more capable of stabilizing the country. The Egyptian leadership’s main concern, in turn, has always been regime survival. Initially, this meant warding off the most pressing domestic challenges by silencing all opposing voices and manifesting its power grip; an endeavour for which it did not consider the EU to be helpful. As a consequence, relations cooled down, but both sides began to reach out to each other shortly thereafter. This article describes and explains the gradual rapprochement by tracing how and why the EU’s and Egypt’s perceptions, priorities and policies changed over time. It argues that the EU sought closer relations due to the accelerating migration challenge and terrorist threat as well as Egypt’s strategy to diversify its foreign relations and underscore the country’s importance. Once it had regained control over the domestic setting, the Egyptian government, in turn, shifted its attention to overcoming the economic crisis, which it perceives as the main threat to regime survival in the long-run. Hereby, the EU shall play a key role.

This paper shall address the relationship between the EU and Egypt before and after the Egyptian revolution. In this regard, the relations between the two entities emerged in the last century with some cooperation agreements to facilitate their inter-trade. Afterward, the relationship has been evolved after signing the partnership agreement between the EU from one side and some of the SMCs (South Mediterranean Countries) from the other side including Egypt. The main concern of this paper is to tackle the EU CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) adopted by the EU in reacting to the Egyptian revolution with all its stages (Mubarak's step down, the Military rule, the Muslim Brotherhood and the final revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood rule). This paper shall also examine the success of the CFSP application in the Egyptian situation with all its drawbacks and achievement and whether it efficiently attenuated the effect of any prospective challenge or failed.

Publications in Contemporary Affairs 2011

In this article I will use Social Contract theory in order to explain how the responsibilities of the Egyptian military towards its military leadership and towards its people will guide the military‟s behaviour in the coming months. It will be particularly interesting to see how the military acts in absence of actual state power and to what extent the loyalties of the military to its main principle, the state, steer the behaviour of the military leadership as well as the ordinary soldiers towards the Egyptian people asking for political change. So as to be able to understand the underlying dynamics of civil-military relations one has to go beyond merely explaining the Social Contract but analyze the corresponding state-soldier relations as manifested in the state-soldier contract. It is essential to comprehend the different obligations of the state towards society and the military towards the state in order to make a credible statement about how the Egyptian army will deal with society‟s demand for socio- political changes. This article will answer the question to what extent the Egyptian military is morally obliged by the Social Contract as well as the state-soldier contract to act upon the popular demand for socio-political reform and how the particular political and military environment within Egypt's state apparatus might affect this moral obligation to act.

Seven years after the 2011 uprising in Egypt, a combination of domestic challenges, together with instability in the Middle East and North Africa region has stalled the country's ongoing transition. Stability in Egypt is key for the region, and the country's international partners such as the EU have a clear interest in helping move the country towards stability and prosperity. To that end, this study investigates the main challenges facing Egypt, focusing on social, economic, political and environmental challenges. The study analyses the implications of these challenges for Egypt's stability in the coming decades. The study then examines the key drivers of EU-Egypt relations and provides a number of policy recommendations on how the EU can support Egypt's longer-term stability. The study argues that the EU's economic and security engagement with Egypt should not come at the expense of supporting democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The study also argues that EU programmatic assistance to Egypt should focus on youth, women, education, and entrepreneurship. Finally, the study also argues that the EU's engagement is likely to be more successful if EU member states are more unified in their approach towards Egypt.

Review of Economic and Political Science, 2019

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to outline how the EU figures out the importance of strengthening its relations with Egypt as one of the most strategic countries in the region to keep the union secured and stable. The paper also assesses to what extent the EU succeeds to promote democracy in Egypt. Design/methodology/approach-The EU pursues its policy through a series of both bilateral and multilateral agreements with Egypt aiming at positioning their relations in a strategic context. The research adopted different approaches as descriptive and analytical ones. Findings-Following the Arab uprisings, the EU was caught by surprise and announced a paradigm shift in its relations and introduced a set of policies to foster democracy promotion that witnessed some successes but with extremely modest results in some areas compared to the costs of the process. The EU succeeded in important reforms in trade liberalization while it did not bring clear changes in the political arena in Egypt. Originality/value-The findings of this paper convey that the Arab uprisings were a wake-up call for the EU. It was the right time for the EU to conduct such a strategic and sincere reflection based on the role it wants to play in the changing region. In addition, findings prove that the EU's response to revolutionary events has been weak and hesitant, and the EU has not an effective role in promoting democracy in Egypt.

The optimism that characterized the Arab Spring in 2011 has begun to sour as reality sets in. The legacy of the Arab Spring has now borne witness to more than 110,000 Syrian deaths, insecurity in Libya, military control in Egypt, and renewed instability in Algeria i. Abstract This paper examines the imperative of African Union's intervention in the crisis of democratic institutionalization in Egypt. It utilized secondary sources of data in the analysis and interpretation of the current situation in Egypt. Findings show that the current crisis in Egypt and the increasing violence indicate that governance by force and through the exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood will escalate the crisis and will be very risky for the stability of Egypt and the region. Consequently, the paper calls on the African Union to provide the strategic leadership and the good offices in resolving the crisis. The paper suggests that in doing this, the AU should ensure that the

2012

This paper analyzes the perspectives of the in many ways surprising development in Egypt since early 2011 for the strategic relations between Egypt and the EU. First of all existing bilateral agreements between the EU and Egypt will be discussed and to which degree changes are in the pipeline as a result of the political changes in Egypt and the Middle East following the Arab revolts. Furthermore significant strategic agreements which Egypt has entered with regional partners in the Middle East are discussed in the context of Egyptian-European relations. Finally it is the ambition to discuss to which degree we will see changes of foreign and security policy relations between Egypt and the EU after the fall of the Mubarak regime and the start of an unclear but significant transformation process.