The US’ retreat from its global role has renewed intense conversations about a more “geopolitical” Europe. They have focused on where Europe stands in relation to the world’s great powers — sometimes at the expense of the places where EU foreign policy has a more immediate, widespread, and lasting impact.
This may shift somewhat this autumn, when the European Commission will unveil a new strategy for the Mediterranean neighbourhood. It’s a chance to reverse a short-term strategy which has made both Europe and her neighbours more — not less — unstable.
It marks a decade since the summit that gave rise to the EU Trust Fund for Africa, which helped shape European regional policy into something more short-term, transactional, and counterproductive — with mistakes repeated rather than learned from.
Nowhere have the shortcomings of Europe’s approach been clearer than in Libya, which earlier this year expelled international aid agencies, amid a government clampdown on migration, which has involved a surge of violence.
The EU has sought cooperation from Libya on oil access, migration control, and combating organised crime.
However, the country remains deeply unstable, with evidence mounting daily of EU funding being funnelled toward organised crime, in an environment where the line between official state institutions and militias remains thin.
Numerous state and non-state actors are involved in the exploitation of migrants and trafficking in persons, as confirmed by migrant testimonies and reports from humanitarian organisations. Large-scale human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law are prevalent, often linked to organised criminal groups.
High-level individuals in the Libyan state are implicated in these violations, which include exploitative labour, forced labour, slavery, trafficking, detention, kidnapping for ransom, sexual and gender-based violence, torture, and extortion.
Their business model involves organising migrant departures while simultaneously receiving international funds, with re-trafficking being a common occurrence.
The EU has inadvertently made itself vulnerable to blackmail and further destabilised Libya
The fragmentation and diversity of actors in Libya make it difficult to create a clear picture of the situation. Migrants and refugees are frequently passed between multiple intermediaries, including the Department for Combating Irregular Migration (DCIM) centres, often moving northward towards the Mediterranean Sea, even if Europe was not their intended destination.
Meanwhile, the Libyan Coast Guard plays a significant role in intercepting and returning migrants to Libya, increasing the risk of re-trafficking.
Funding provided to Libyan authorities for border and migration management lacks oversight, leading to misuse and further exploitation. The EU has inadvertently made itself vulnerable to blackmail and further destabilised Libya.
The reputational damage done to the EU in the Global South through its links to torture, slavery, violence, and death in Libya is not easily recoverable. And sadly, the Libyan story is not a one-off experience but reflected in a wider foreign policy approach.
Following the Libyan revolution, Agadez, Niger, became a key transit hub for migrants from West Africa heading to Libya and Europe.
The EU pressured the Nigerian government to criminalise migrant smuggling in 2015. This led to the implementation of Law 2015-36, which effectively disrupted the migration economy in Agadez. The law primarily targeted low-level migration facilitators, such as drivers and “passeurs”, or guides, rather than influential businessmen involved in larger smuggling networks.
This led to the professionalisation and consolidation of organised smuggling, whilst ordinary people providing commercial services were found criminalised. This shift contributed to the development of a conflict economy, with local armed actors exerting increasing control over economic activity.
In 2019, the UN Human Rights Committee reported that Niger’s EU-backed landmark anti-smuggling law had “forc[ed] migrants to go underground and face conditions that expose them to many forms of abuse and human rights violations.”
Migrants had to take more dangerous, circuitous paths through the desert to avoid detection, leading to higher fatalities. The crackdown also resulted in a loss of income for many in Agadez, pushing former smugglers and those involved in the migration economy to turn to gold mining and other illicit activities.
Criminalisation exacerbated longstanding tensions, with local people perceiving the government's actions as prioritising European interests over their own. This led to strained relationships between local and national authorities and increased dissatisfaction with the international community.
This backlash was far from the only factor which brought to power a new government in a 2023 coup, which was more hostile to EU interests generally.
But it is striking that repealing the unpopular law was one of the new government’s first actions — and already it appears that doing so may have made movement safer.
Again, transactional European diplomacy appears to have caused harm, failed to achieve its aims, and risked increasing the perception of the EU in Africa as a neocolonial force, at a time when Brussels urgently needs to build bridges in the Global South.
Across the region, from Egypt to Tunisia to Mauritania, the EU has deprioritised its human rights and democratic values in order to achieve short-term aims in its deal-making.
This loss of moral credibility is dangerous for the EU, and risks backfiring even in the short term, as discontent linked to European policy can produce a sudden and powerful backlash, potentially including cooperation with Europe’s rivals.
The current approach also burns bridges with civil society and potential allies, whilst placing European strategic interests in the hands of unreliable actors who can and do misuse their leverage.
If the EU continues to make short-term goals like migration control and resource access the centre of its Mediterranean policy, it will undermine those aims. And it will also mean lost opportunities to help create a stable and thriving region more broadly.
The Mediterranean Pact, a new framework for European dealmaking in the region, is a chance to change course.
This dangerous global moment urgently demands leaders with the courage to stand by human rights and universal values, whilst too many abandon them. Europe can begin doing so in its own neighbourhood.
We need a strategy that stops trying to fix single problems, like smuggling, with blunt force, and instead looks at connections between systemic risks and tries to address them in the interests of all.
A complex mix of climate and ecological insecurity, unequal systems of exchange, and political and economic fragility, continues to drive conflict, displacement, and crisis on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Through long-term investment, commitment to human rights and the rule of law, mutually beneficial international partnerships that include communities and civil society, and a serious attempt to improve quality of life, Europe can make a positive difference toward achieving genuine safety and security for all.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Katia Golovko is a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute's conflict research unit.
Katia Golovko is a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute's conflict research unit.