EU Accession Dynamics And Conflict Resolution: Catalysing Peace Or Consolidating Partition In Cyprus?

by Nathalie Tocci

Since 1993, the European Commission, EU member states and the Republic of Cyprus have raised the expectation that the prospect of Cyprus' EU membership would act as a catalyst for a settlement of the island's conflict. Yet the divisions between the positions of the principal parties widened and the 1990s witnessed an escalation of tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thereafter, despite the re-launch of the peace process in 2002-2004, the divided island joined the EU on 1 May 2004. This study analyzes the case of Cyprus and the EU. It explores the interrelationship between the evolution of the conflict and the development of EU-Cyprus relations within the accession process; it explains the factors driving the conduct of EU policies towards the conflict; and it demonstrates that the EU framework could have added important incentives for a resolution of the conflict by providing an alternative context within which to address the basic needs of the principal parties.

205 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2004

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1224586.html[return][return]The title of this book sounds rather general, but it has a much more specific subtitle: 'Catalysing Peace or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus?' The second of those options, at least from the perspective of late 2004 when the book was published, seems to have been the outcome. I know the author very well, and we have collaborated on Cyprus in the past, so a lot of what is in the book is exactly what I would expect her to write; in summary, it's a very good, lucid explanation of how it was that the EU manage to screw this one up, to the point that the accession process actually encouraged Greek Cypriots to reject the peace plan in the April 2004 referendum.[return][return]Even so, there were a couple of interesting points that hadn't occurred to me before. The first was Tocci's analysis of the dysfunctionality of EU institutions. Within the EU, Greece pushed Greek Cypriot interests, and the Commission worked on Greek Cypriot accession (as this was the mandate it had received from member states, at Greek insistence). Nobody in the EU actually had conflict resolution as their goal - certainly nobody who was a significant actor within the system. There was also a lack of information inside the EU about what was really going on in Cyprus, but I feel that even if (as I do) EU officials had had subscriptions to the daily headlines from the Cypriot press, that still wouldn't have provided the necessary motivation. The EU is good at resolving conflicts among its own members, but much less so along its borderlands.[return][return]The second point which jumped out at me is not Tocci's, but her summary of John Burton's general theory of conflict: that it arises when certain basic human needs (physical security, justice, recognition of one's identity) are frustrated. These are non-negotiable; the ways in which they can be satisfied ('satisfiers', eg local autonomy) however are negotiable. Secession is not an end in itself: the real desires are for security and self-determination. The introductory chapter summarises other writers such as Zartman and Galtung, but this was the point that really struck a chord with me. I'll need to hunt out Burton's work, and also any critiques that are out there.