European Neighborhood Policy: A Case Study of Morocco

This paper looks at the institutional set-up and the politico-economic dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy towards Morocco from a foreign policy analysis standpoint. Thanks to its particular progress and ambition, Morocco is among the four countries whose bilateral ties with the EU are to be upgraded. As far as regards the economic and social issues of the policy, relevant progresses have been done in the practice by starting in 2008 the negotiations of an agreement on liberalizing trade in services and investments. The energy sector development is of high interest because of the strengthening of Morocco's role in the EU energy security as a country of transit in the Maghreb region. What is however striking in EU-Morocco relations is the low priority of political issues in comparison to the economic and energy related issues. An important exception to this is the area of Justice and Home Affairs, where arguably, the politics of insecurity produces policies at incomparable speed. It can be argued that not only the individual level of structural foreign policy is neglected, but also the importance of societal and inter-societal levels in effective foreign policy-making is not rightly emphasized.