Decolonizing the spaces of European foreign policy: views from the Maghreb

Abstract

This essay calls for a decolonization of European foreign policy in the Maghreb. Specifically, it identifies neo-Orientalizing dynamics within the EU foreign policy-making apparatus by tracking the contradictory and fragmenting effects of the European Neighbourhood Programme (ENP) on the promotion of economic development in Morocco and Tunisia. Drawing on sustained fieldwork conducted by one of the authors in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in both these countries, and inspired by a mid-twentieth century intellectual legacy emerging in and from the Maghreb, the essay proposes an “other thinking” (pensée autre) capable of refiguring the Europe–Maghreb relation beyond the stalemate offered by ENPI. Such a rethinking, it is argued, would consider more explicitly the presence of political Islam as a vector of economic development in ways that restage the Euro-Maghreb as a postcolonial horizon rather than a fixed border between self-sufficient geopolitical entities.