EU Policy in the Middle East in the Midst of War

In early 2026, the EU was working hard to publish a new strategy for the Middle East, following the Pact for the Mediterranean agreed in 2025. Yet with conflict raging across the Middle East, the EU then delayed the new strategy, a sign of the bloc’s largely reactive posture towards the region. If the June 2026 US-Iran accord to extend the ceasefire between the two countries now allows the EU to move forward with its strategy, the union will need to update its strategic thinking for the events of the last six months.

Current events are pushing the EU even further towards a transactional approach, with democracy commitments now largely absent from European policy in the region. The EU can and should still try to engage with reform actors in the Middle East, as these are increasingly pushing for change. To do this, the union will need to shift direction radically, both from its current disengagement and from its traditional democracy-support policies. Democratic forces in the region have become increasingly frustrated with EU policy; for their part, they need to find ways of engaging with Europe that keep their democratic hopes alive, especially in the aftermath of the US attacks against Iran.

An unpromising context

On 28 November 2025, ministers from the EU member states and southern Mediterranean partner countries gathered in Barcelona to launch the Pact for the Mediterranean. A clear departure from the ambitions of the earlier Barcelona Process, the new accord received limited attention from observers, a telling sign of how much had changed.

The pact crystallised the EU’s priorities towards the region, which were framed overwhelmingly around migration control, counter-terrorism, stability, geostrategic competition, and access to energy and markets. It also envisioned support for civil society and independent media, but in a limited manner. Central to this vision was that the EU is no longer trying to shape political outcomes in the southern Mediterranean. It is trying to manage their consequences.

The EU also began developing a new Middle East strategy, which was initially scheduled for the second quarter of 2026 but was delayed by the Iran conflict. The strategy was supposed to advance a more impactful EU role in the Middle East, help stabilise the region, and anchor its countries more closely to the union.

The US-Israeli war with Iran clearly entrenches a security-first logic. European policymakers are doubling down on short-term stability partnerships with authoritarian actors, which are seen as central to crisis control, with democratic reform an increasingly distant afterthought.

The regional landscape has shifted decisively: democratic backsliding is accelerating, and a military and security logic is once again dominant. The failed Arab Spring uprisings of the 2010s gave rise to a wave of authoritarian entrenchment, which left civil society isolated and confined to narrow spaces.

The EU’s pact and strategy do contain potential leverage points for democracy-focused action. The pact’s commitment to “inclusive and sustainable economic development” provides a political basis for linking financial assistance instruments to governance safeguards and transparency benchmarks. An action plan launched in April 2026, which will be reassessed after six months, represents the most immediate opportunity to embed such benchmarks before priorities are institutionalised. The strategy, led by the European External Action Service (EEAS), offers a parallel track through which structural barriers to democratisation could be addressed more substantively than the pact currently allows.

And yet, while democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are formally part of the EU’s foreign policy identity, in practice they are distant priorities. Their survival owes less to political will than to institutional inertia and the continued push by civil society networks for a values-based EU neighbourhood policy.

In this, the EU is out of line with people in the region. In my continuous dialogues in the Middle East, few people express hopes for any democratic transformation in the short term. This sober realism is echoed by politicians and activists across the southern Mediterranean. They see democratic transformation not only as a long-term project but also as a necessary one, since authoritarianism has repeatedly failed to address the region’s core socioeconomic challenges.

Drivers of the EU’s southern Mediterranean policy

Europe, too, has changed since the Barcelona Process was launched in 1995, and the Pact for the Mediterranean reflects the current drivers of the EU’s southern Mediterranean policy.

The most visible and politically sensitive factor is migration. Limiting irregular arrivals has become a defining issue in European politics, making cooperation with southern Mediterranean governments essential. The EU’s approach is twofold: building countries’ border-management capacity, and ensuring their willingness to stop departures and accept deported citizens. This is often secured through financial and political incentives, typically by avoiding criticism of authoritarian practices in exchange for cooperation. Migration has become the central currency of European relations with the region, the organising principle to which other priorities are increasingly subordinated.

Security cooperation and counter-terrorism follow closely. The region’s authoritarian leaders have long presented themselves as bulwarks against terrorism, and European security agencies depend on their counterparts for intelligence to thwart attacks. The Iran conflict is likely to reinforce the logic of security cooperation, as the EU scrambled to explore means of safeguarding freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Economic and political stability also matters. The EU justifies bailouts and macrofinancial assistance as necessary to prevent collapse and spillovers, even when they entrench regimes that offer short-term stability while deepening long-term fragility.

Energy, markets, and geopolitics compound the picture. The southern Mediterranean supplies oil and gas in volumes that have grown in strategic importance since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and represents a potential green battery for the energy transition. The EU also seeks preferential access to southern Mediterranean markets, including lucrative contracts and arms exports, while working to limit the expanding footprints of China and Russia in the region.

The energy-market turmoil caused by the Iran war has pushed European efforts to protect regional trade routes to the top of the agenda. The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz raised the cost of energy, hitting living standards at home and providing an unintended windfall for Russian energy exports. European governments are forced to contemplate how to mitigate the economic fallout of a war they did not choose and whose impact is likely to last. Europe deployed a mission to safeguard shipping in the Strait of Bab al-Mandab after repeated Houthi attacks during the Gaza war. However, proposals to extend or adapt the mission for the Strait of Hormuz have so far not secured the unanimity required among EU members.

Challenges for democratisation

According to the June 2025 Arab Barometer survey, majorities across the southern Mediterranean say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, and what they mean by democracy goes beyond elections. Yet, interviews I conducted with politicians and officials throughout the region pointed to five key challenges for democracy promotion.

The first and most obvious obstacle is that state and nonstate authoritarian actors are opposed to reforms that threaten their grip on power. They have shown their material and political capacity to prevent mass popular uprisings, reinforced by expanding digital surveillance and repression. Iran’s deadly suppression of protests and the wave of arrests across the Middle East and north Africa (MENA) of those who criticise their government’s conduct or report the impacts of the war are clear reminders that the region’s leaders have little appetite for views that diverge from the official narrative.

Second, economic hardship and instability have bred wariness of democratisation. For the Arab Spring generation, political turbulence coincided with worsening economic conditions. For those doing well, democratisation risks threatening their wealth or privileges, while for the rest of the population it is even riskier, with no guaranteed positive outcomes. Tunisia is a stark example, where polls have consistently shown increasing dissatisfaction with economic prospects, with many blaming the country’s 2010 uprising.

Third, malign actors have weaponised misinformation and disinformation to erode support for democracy, presenting it as unstable and hypocritical while portraying authoritarian states as secure and prosperous. Russia and several regional authoritarian actors have run sustained influence campaigns in the Arab world to undermine trust in the west and democratic governance.

Fourth, no international partner is offering meaningful incentives for democratisation, and some are actively discouraging it. Gone are the days of the EU’s “more for more” agenda. Countries’ strategic alignment with US or EU priorities is now the only game in town. Meanwhile, the Gulf states, Iran, Israel, Russia, and Turkey have all sought to strengthen favoured state or nonstate actors in the region, in many cases against popular will, and several have acted militarily to advance their interests, severely disrupting regional stability.

Finally, democratic forces in the southern Mediterranean have failed to present a convincing alternative to authoritarianism. The reasons for this have long been debated. In various conversations over the last year, experienced politicians across the region all agreed that democratisation is unlikely right now, but very few could articulate a vision for building the conditions for it – or for seizing another opportunity like the Arab Spring should it arise.

Why Europe should continue to promote democracy

Authoritarian regimes in the southern Mediterranean have repeatedly shown themselves unable to deliver long-term stability. The 2010–11 uprisings exposed this fragility, as regimes that European governments had long defended as stable partners collapsed within weeks. The EU had deprioritised democracy promotion in favour of counter-terrorism cooperation. Egypt under former President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were the clearest expressions of this logic.

Afterwards, European officials conducted what civil society veterans describe as an “apology tour”, privately acknowledging they had failed to heed warnings of authoritarian fragility and that uncritical EU support had emboldened regimes to ignore vital reforms. Yet the EU’s current approach is not merely abandoning the lessons of 2010–11; it is reinstating the very logic it once apologised for.

The dynamics of political participation in MENA today echo those in the run-up to the 2010–11 uprisings. A 2025 study by political scientist Nadine Sika documented widespread dissatisfaction with formal institutions alongside continued informal mobilisation. In Jordan and Morocco, issue-oriented contention has extracted concrete policy concessions on taxation, wages, and public services, showing that citizens retain real leverage even when formal politics has been closed off. Governments have contained this pressure through concessions, co-optation, and repression but have not resolved it. The apparent stability they offer is managed instability rather than genuine order.

The current logic of the EU’s Mediterranean policy is inherently unsustainable. By seeking to offer payouts to authoritarian governments in exchange for cooperation, the union is not fostering mutually beneficial cooperation; it is setting itself up as a bank these governments can tap by simply raising their price.

This is shown by events in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza. Each of these crises had roots that European policy identified but declined to address politically, preferring to manage them through transactional cooperation. The consequences are now coming home in the form of rising energy prices driven by disruption to Gulf supplies, the prospect of new migration waves that will test Europe’s already strained political consensus, and growing pressure on European capitals to commit further financing and, potentially, personnel to reconstruction and security efforts they have little leverage to shape. Conflict management has a price, and the bill is now due.

Nor is the cost contained to the southern Mediterranean. Europe’s illiberal right has been emboldened by anxieties over migration and terrorism, two issues directly shaped by the EU’s Mediterranean policy. Two EU members are facing arrest warrant noncooperation proceedings in the International Criminal Court linked to their policies in the region. Several European states have faced accusations of restricting the speech and assembly rights of their citizens over criticism of their foreign policies in the Mediterranean.

By allowing its democracy-promotion agenda to atrophy, Europe undermines its only allies that share its values. Meanwhile, China and the US have material advantages that Europe cannot match. Even Russia and regional players in the Gulf and Turkey may have more to offer in the form of military or financial support to authoritarian leaders. What none of those actors can offer is values-based cooperation. Europe is abandoning that comparative advantage.

What is more, as pro-democracy forces in the region lose faith in and support from Europe, some are rethinking their values-based engagement. A few years ago, the mere mention of Gulf or Chinese partnerships or funding would have been out of the question for them. Nowadays, there are discussions of how to pragmatically engage such external actors. Others, however, understand that such a path is unrealistic or outright dangerous.

As a prominent Lebanese progressive activist pointed out to me, “when Europeans bail on us, they are merely leaving the space for extremist and anti-European forces to take up space in the public sphere”.

The Syrian case makes the stakes concrete. When change came after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, democratic forces were too weak to shape the transition. Meanwhile, regional powers, such as Turkey and key Gulf states, which had sustained political and material influence during Assad’s rule, were far better positioned to mould outcomes. A European official lamented what he saw as the EU not getting enough credit for its principled position against normalisation with Assad. But the union cannot have it both ways: choosing not to support democratic actors when Assad was in power means accepting a back seat when he fell.

Thus, in trying to buy stability, the EU is increasing both its cost and its scarcity.

Why regional democratic forces should not give up on the EU

EU cooperation with the southern Mediterranean will continue to grow, and states in the region will inevitably reflect EU priorities to some degree. Should democratic forces in MENA disengage from that relationship, they would harm their own interests, however justified their frustrations.

Those frustrations are real. Democratic forces in the southern Mediterranean have grown disillusioned with the EU’s double standards over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the union’s accommodation of authoritarian regimes, and its declining funding for democracy. But while pro-democracy actors need to rethink their approach to the EU, it would be a strategic mistake for them to turn away.

For years, EU- and US-funded civil society organisations lobbied European states and the US to put pressure on southern Mediterranean governments to pursue democratic and human rights reforms. Later, many of these organisations tried to hold these countries’ leaderships accountable through European judicial or political systems. The historic effectiveness of these strategies is debatable, but the direction of travel under the EU’s Pact for the Mediterranean runs counter to them, and the model itself has become fragile.

The almost complete reliance of local civil society on foreign funding, combined with language and operational styles that local publics increasingly see as foreign, has proved a risky bet. Declining funding for civil society, growing hostility to activist civil society in Europe, and disillusionment with the rules-based world order in the southern Mediterranean have undermined the credibility and effectiveness of civil society in the region. Times change, and democratic forces must change with them.

Transitions away from donor dependence are neither impossible nor unprecedented. Civil society organisations in central and eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of southeast Asia have navigated similar funding contractions by developing membership models, fee-for-service arrangements with local municipalities, and coalitions with trade unions and professional associations. These are not perfect analogies, but they offer starting points. For example, the global civil society alliance Civicus estimated that in Latin America between 2014 and 2017, 33% of funding was sourced locally.

Conclusions

Few on either side would argue that democratisation is imminent in the southern Mediterranean. The structural forces that shape EU policy leave little room for ambition. But little room is not no room, and those committed to long-term democratic change must work within the constraints that exist. This suggests some pointers for the EU’s new Middle East strategy, if and when it takes shape.

First, the EU should embed women’s participation in the labour force and environmental safeguards as explicit targets in its economic partnership agreements in the region. The EU should also ensure that debt-based instruments, such as macrofinancial assistance, are linked to strong governance safeguards and economic reforms that promote socioeconomic development, and do not lead to debt traps. These priorities should be construed not as conditions but as objectives that ultimately contribute to economic stability and prosperity.

Second, the EU should pilot hybrid funding models in which initial grants gradually decrease while supporting civil society organisations to develop fundraising through social enterprise revenue, membership dues, or domestic philanthropy. These ideas need to emerge from civil society itself. However, the EU can meet it halfway by adopting a more flexible posture towards funding revenue-generating models, where the primary impact of such funding is not service delivery but a movement towards independent financing.

Third, the EU should use its privileged access to southern Mediterranean officials, which few other actors enjoy, to encourage more pluralist policies, including releasing political prisoners and easing restrictions on media and civil society. While saving public criticism of its counterparts’ policies to the narrowest instances, the EU should identify achievable reforms and pass coordinated messages calling for such reforms privately at all levels. This requires high-level coordination between Brussels and EU delegations in the region.

Fourth, the EU must build on its growing work to combat the risks posed by misinformation, disinformation, and the amplifying potential of AI. This requires better governance and oversight of European companies that may be providing technical support to state or nonstate actors that perpetuate disruptive information practices. It also requires supporting pro-democracy actors who are combating these tactics and ensuring that state-to-state cooperation on AI is based on solid governance that limits the misuse of these tools.

Fifth, the EU should leverage its economic relationships to restrain destabilising behaviour by actors in the southern Mediterranean and reward their stabilising policies. The union should not shy away from freezing its trade deal with Israel pending a verifiable reduction in actions that destabilise neighbouring states and territories.

Looking ahead, Iran should be treated as a central test of whether the EU can support democratic forces without reducing them to instruments of geopolitical confrontation. The union should expand its support for independent Iranian media, digital security, employment, women’s rights, students, and diaspora networks while avoiding any language that frames democratisation as a western regime-change project. This means protecting Iranian activists in exile, responding more consistently to transnational repression, tightening controls on European technologies that enable surveillance, and ensuring that sanctions target perpetrators rather than further isolating society. The EU cannot engineer democratic change in Iran, but it can help preserve the actors, channels, and civic capacities that would make such change possible when political openings emerge.

In the Gulf more broadly, the EU should use the current moment – from the Gulf rethinking of security architecture in view of the Iran war to the schism between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – as an opening to offer both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi progressively deeper economic ties in return for specific behavioural changes. Among these changes should be a verifiable reduction in financial and material support for armed proxies across the region and concrete steps to expand civic space domestically, including for independent media and nongovernmental organisations. Far from demanding democratic transformation, the EU should define narrow, measurable asks – such as permitting specific civil society organisations to operate or engaging with regional platforms for civic dialogue – that give both sides a face-saving path to incremental change.

Ultimately, though, pro-democracy forces in the southern Mediterranean must change in the face of shifting realities. This requires a serious rethinking of their funding models, their civil society structures, their relationships with governments and regional players, and – above all – their relationships with citizens and national actors. These forces must recognise that democratisation will not be dictated from Europe, the US, or elsewhere. Instead, it must be driven by building up local support and presenting credible homegrown solutions to key challenges that citizens face and a believable promise of a better future.

The action plan being developed under the EU’s Pact for the Mediterranean and the prospective new Middle East strategy will not be transformative instruments, but they are the terrain on which the next phase of this long-term work will be either enabled or foreclosed. In this environment, success is no longer democratic transition but preventing the full closure of political space and preserving the actors capable of shaping future openings.

 

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This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Photo credit: European Union/Council of the European Union, 2026