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Federica Zardo
European Foreign Affairs Review
Volume 22, Issue 1 (2017) pp. 75 – 89
https://doi.org/10.54648/eerr2017005
Abstract
Soon after the jasmine revolution and the fall of Ben Ali’s regime in 2011, the migration and mobility dossier immediately entered the cooperation agenda between the European Union (EU) and Tunisia and dominated bilateral negotiations. The signature of the Joint Declaration for a Mobility Partnership was an important breakthrough in EU-Tunisia cooperation, since after decades of stalemate, the agreement allegedly sealed a new mutual will to cooperate in a sensitive policy area. Despite its pivotal role in the ‘new turn’ in EU-Tunisia relations, and against the EU declared quest for strengthened co-ownership, this contribution argues that the first steps of the EU-Tunisia Privileged Partnership in the realm of migration tend to replicate rooted dynamics rather than breaking with the past.
It is contented that the permanence of deep institutional embeddedness in times of volatile transition limited the leeway of the Tunisian government, confirm the asymmetric nature of the relationship and questions the possibility for future cooperation priorities to be truly co-owned.
Extract
The unambiguous reality of human civilization is that we now are globally interconnected. This fact is revealed by ‘world wars’, which happened for the first time in the history of humankind only in the last century. In context, global human population size has grown more than 1000% since the advent of the nation-state with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. During this period, the influence of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) has been expanding, certainly since the industrial revolution around 1800 when the human population reached 1 billion, accelerating to 8 billion people as we enter the next decade during our digital revolution. The challenges are on a planetary scale, as reflected further by concern about Earth’s climate, crossing the spectrum of sub-national to international jurisdictions with the nation-state at the centre. As an example, science diplomacy from the polar regions illustrates how transatlantic science relations are embedded into a global context. With hope and inspiration from the perspective of a practitioner and observer, the evolution of science diplomacy is shared herein with local-global applications as an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive (holistic) process, involving informed decision-making to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations.
European Foreign Affairs Review