Negotiating European integration on the southern periphery [Ressource électronique] : democracy deficits and bargaining power in the Maghreb / by Carl Dawson

Ph. D. : University of Pittsburgh : 2007

Bibliogr. p. 150-158

From 1992 until 1995, Morocco and the European Union (EU) were in negotiations for an Association Agreement as part of a regional initiative, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (or "Barcelona process"). The free trade provisions of the agreement seemed unfavorable for Morocco: they largely excluded agriculture, and, therefore, many products in which Morocco could have made significant gains, they opened the Moroccan market to competition from EU non-agricultural products (Morocco had achieved equivalent access to EU markets decades earlier), and EU funding for Moroccan company upgrading fell far short of expectations. This research sought to determine how the respective political systems of Morocco and the European Union led to the EU proposing, and Morocco accepting, a sub-optimal agreement. These issues were explored through recorded and transcribed interviews with key Moroccan and EU players, and through document analysis, and the resulting data were analyzed primarily in terms of Putnam's two-level game model of international negotiation. The principal findings are that Morocco may have achieved a better free trade deal had it been an open and democratic system during the period of negotiations. The closed and elitist nature of the Moroccan negotiation and ratification process meant that the official negotiating position did not account for the full range of interests affected by trade liberalization, and that the hand of the Moroccan negotiators in advocating even that less demanding position could not be strengthened by the threat of ratification failure - the prospect that dissident groups might reject the final agreement in Parliament, in a referendum, or in the streets. The European Union negotiation and ratification process, although open and democratic, was skewed by the lack of significant participation by most member States. Only France, Spain and Italy participated intensively, a situation that ensured the protection of powerful national lobbies (primarily Spanish farmers and fishermen) at the expense of Morocco and of EU economic development objectives for North Africa. The convergence of minimal participation in Morocco and significant but wholly inadequate participation in the European Union led to an agreement favoring narrow European sectoral interests at the expense of the broader vision of the Euro- Mediterranean partnership.