EU Security Policies towards the Mediterranean: The Ethical Dimension – what do we know and what else should we know? INEX Policy Brief No. 2, December 2009

There is very little information about or reflection upon the Mediterranean countries’ perspectives on EU security policies, concludes Pinar Bilgin of Bilkent University, Ankara, in this literature review of the ethical dimensions of the subject. Mediterranean neighbours are mostly viewed as the subjects of EU security policy and are given very little agency in analyses, yet different Mediterranean countries have adopted different stances towards security policies. Some have used the opportunity to upgrade their relations with the European Union; others have utilised the new EU discourse on terrorism to frame their new/old policies on existing (internal/external) security concerns. Moreover, there is very little research uses on the value premises embedded in EU policies. While both the EMP and the ENP have failed to deliver what they promised, security practices across the Mediterranean have already begun to converge. Research that looks at the implications of such a convergence for human security is a scarce commodity indeed. The INEX project, of which this paper forms the second Policy Brief, aims to fill in such gaps.