Abstract:
This thesis focuses on the Mediterranean area, a unicum in international politics. Colonization created distrust of any proposal from the northern side of the sea. Therefore, Europe's desire to promote democratization needed to find a strategy that did not reawaken those distant episodes. The first chapter describes the tie between economic growth and democracy. This is where the idea to use trade as an engine for democracy's promotion came from. It states that, rather than exporting a political model, it is preferable to adopt aid policies that bind individual governments to engage in virtuous behaviours - the so-called conditionalities - respecting in particular human rights and good governance principles. The second chapter is a historical and political excursus from the 1960s to the birth of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). The third chapter deepens the issue of human rights, showing how defining basic ones was the only way to make them acceptable for the entire international community. This analysis tries to explain why democratic countries continue to deal with countries that violate human rights almost on a daily basis. The final chapter presents the case study of Egypt and its controversial relations with the EU, which continue despite the evident human rights violations inside Egyptian prisons. This work relies on the analysis of existing research literature and UfM policies, as well as various reports from Euro Med Rights organization and other ONGs.
