In
the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, the European Union’s
(EU) relations with the Southern neighbour countries (SNCs) have been reframed
in the light of a new élan of democracy promotion. The underlying logic of this
approach was to leverage the building and consolidation of democracy and rule
of law through enhanced cooperation in terms of more ‘markets,
money and mobility’. A sort of mobility-democracy nexus has been assumed by the European
Commission as a crucial dimension of the EU’s external relations with SNCs. Within this strategy, Mobility Partnerships
(MPs) with SNCs have been identified as a key policy tool for EU democracy promotion.
Via original qualitative analysis of European Commission’s
documents, MPs, and other migration and mobility agreements that the EU has
negotiated with SNCs since 2011, this paper explores how the mobility-democracy
nexus has been defined in the Commission’s talks. We critically discuss the effectiveness of this nexus and
demonstrate the inefficacy of MPs as a tool to promote democracy by fostering
more mobility and regular migration flows. Looking at the content of MPs with
three SNCs (Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan) allows to trace the transformation of
EU external relations with SNCs from a principled approach into selective issue-oriented
cooperation based on more specific and sectorial policy choices.