By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Geopolist | Istanbul Center for GeopoliticsGeopolist | Istanbul Center for GeopoliticsGeopolist | Istanbul Center for Geopolitics
  • Home
  • Geopolitics
    Geopolitics
    Discover professional insights into international relations, regional conflicts, and global power dynamics by visiting Geopolist. Keep up on the ways in which these changes impact…
    Show More
    Top News
    Operation Spiderweb: The Death of Strategic Depth in the Drone Age
    June 2, 2025
    The End of Vertical War: Operation Spiderweb and the Rise of Horizontal War-Making
    June 3, 2025
    Geography as Destiny: Understanding Syria’s Endless Struggles
    December 26, 2024
    Latest News
    Caught in the Heat: How Egypt’s Energy Dreams Turned Into a Strategic Trap
    June 4, 2025
    The End of Vertical War: Operation Spiderweb and the Rise of Horizontal War-Making
    June 3, 2025
    Operation Spiderweb: The Death of Strategic Depth in the Drone Age
    June 2, 2025
    Canada Seeks Entry Into EU Defense Pact After Trump Missile Demand
    May 29, 2025
  • Security
    SecurityShow More
    Operation Spiderweb: The Death of Strategic Depth in the Drone Age
    June 2, 2025
    Canada Seeks Entry Into EU Defense Pact After Trump Missile Demand
    May 29, 2025
    SAFE Plan Puts Turkey’s EU Role Back in Spotlight
    May 28, 2025
    The Fracturing Nuclear Order and the Uneasy Dawn of a Third Nuclear Age
    April 25, 2025
    Indonesia Eyes Partnership in Turkey’s KAAN Fighter Jet Program Amid Deepening Defense Ties
    April 14, 2025
  • Commentary
    CommentaryShow More
    Caught in the Heat: How Egypt’s Energy Dreams Turned Into a Strategic Trap
    June 4, 2025
    The End of Vertical War: Operation Spiderweb and the Rise of Horizontal War-Making
    June 3, 2025
    Operation Spiderweb: The Death of Strategic Depth in the Drone Age
    June 2, 2025
    Trump’s South Africa Standoff
    May 28, 2025
    Can Sanctions Win a War? The Case of Russia and Ukraine
    May 28, 2025
  • Economy
    • Energy
  • Regions
    • Europe
    • Middle East & Africa
    • Eurasia
  • Jobs
  • My Bookmarks
Reading: Libya and European Union: Navigating a Complex Partnership Amidst Fragmentation and Diverging Interests
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Geopolist | Istanbul Center for GeopoliticsGeopolist | Istanbul Center for Geopolitics
Font ResizerAa
  • Home
  • Geopolitics
  • Security
  • Commentary
  • Economy
  • Regions
  • Jobs
  • My Bookmarks
  • Home
  • Geopolitics
  • Security
  • Commentary
  • Economy
    • Energy
  • Regions
    • Europe
    • Middle East & Africa
    • Eurasia
  • Jobs
  • My Bookmarks
Have an existing account? Sign In
Follow US
  • Advertise
© 2022 Foxiz News Network. Ruby Design Company. All Rights Reserved.
Geopolist | Istanbul Center for Geopolitics > Blog > Regions > Middle East & Africa > Libya and European Union: Navigating a Complex Partnership Amidst Fragmentation and Diverging Interests
CommentaryGeopoliticsMiddle East & Africa

Libya and European Union: Navigating a Complex Partnership Amidst Fragmentation and Diverging Interests

Last updated: August 11, 2024 5:10 pm
By GEOPOLIST | Istanbul Center for Geopolitics Published July 23, 2024 401 Views 11 Min Read
Share
SHARE

The article titled “Libya and the EU: Key Interests, Critical Issues, and Future Prospects” from ISPI (Italian Institute for International Political Studies) explores the complex relationship between Libya and the European Union (EU). Here’s a summary of the key points:

  1. Key Interests:
    • Migration: One of the EU’s primary concerns is managing migration flows from Libya, which is a significant transit point for migrants trying to reach Europe.
    • Security: The EU is interested in stabilizing Libya to prevent the spillover of conflict and terrorism into the Mediterranean region.
    • Energy: Libya’s oil and gas resources are of strategic interest to the EU for energy security and economic reasons.
  2. Critical Issues:
    • Political Instability: Libya has been plagued by political fragmentation and conflict since the fall of Gaddafi, complicating efforts to establish a stable government.
    • Human Rights: The EU faces challenges in addressing human rights abuses in Libya, including issues related to migrant detention centers and internal conflicts.
    • Regional Rivalries: The involvement of various regional actors with competing interests in Libya complicates the EU’s efforts to mediate and stabilize the situation.
  3. Future Prospects:
    • EU Engagement: The EU’s future role may involve a combination of diplomatic efforts, support for peacebuilding initiatives, and cooperation on migration management.
    • Regional Cooperation: Strengthening partnerships with neighboring countries and regional organizations could be crucial for effective intervention and stabilization efforts.
    • Long-Term Solutions: Sustainable progress in Libya will likely require addressing the underlying political, economic, and social issues that contribute to instability.

It provides a comprehensive overview of the strategic interests of the EU in Libya, the challenges it faces, and potential pathways for future engagement and resolution. Read more below.


Libya and Europe are deeply entwined, although neither would really like to admit just how much. For the European Union, and key member states like France, Libya stands as its major Arab Spring intervention, and a perennial foreign policy crisis ever since. Despite numerous high-profile initiatives and UN envoys coming from Europe, Libya still induces regular waves of anxiety in the EU, raising concerns over key issues like migration or Russian roguery and making the country a rotting symbol of European diplomatic failure.

For Libya, Europe represents an, often idealised, ambition. Libya’s undemocratic leaderships hope that European desperation for a familiar, reliable, partner, and the European proclivity to pursue strongman solutions for southern neighbourhood problems, will provide them the foreign legitimacy they desperately crave to maintain power. Libya’s people, however, hope the EU will become an enforcer of their much-vaunted rules-based-order and in doing so help Libya transition to the representative market economy they desire. So, this mutually unsatisfying Euro-Libyan relationship retains the promise for considerable growth and improvement, if either side can figure out just how to advance their interests amongst their counterparts.

What’s Europe to Libya

In today’s deeply broken Libya, nothing is cohesive, including its international relations. So, understanding Libya’s interests, critical issues, and their prospects requires unpacking the different perspectives of different constituencies.

Although Libya may be administratively divided between east and west, its real divide is between the ruling class and the rest. The rabble of weak strongmen, undemocratic parliaments, and illegitimate prime ministers comprising the ruling class are all desperate actors, constantly fiending for foreign support to compensate for their illegitimacy amongst their people. In a land that hasn’t held elections since 2014, and that hasn’t had any sign of meaningful governance for over a decade, these leaders justify their political authority through their foreign engagements, and their lack of progress through domestic divisions that are more theatrical than actual.

So, each actor essentially seeks the same thing from the EU, legitimisation, just in different flavours.

Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeiba, installed via a 2021 UN process supposed to lead to elections within 10 months, seeks to normalise his indefinite stay and broaden his mandate. He does so by blaming electoral failures on his political rivals, while baiting Europeans with lucrative promises of construction contracts and new energy deals. Although the financial input needed to lubricate his corrupt political machine is already sustained by other international players, Western countries retain a unique legitimising capability. So, this subprime Prime Minister also promises counter-migration cooperation, and leverages the spectre of Russian interference for ever greater backing for his government, and an ever blinder eye to the corruption, political crimes, and human rights abuses he presides over.

Dbeiba’s political rival, the speaker of Libya’s House of Representatives Aguileh Saleh, similarly craves the magic of Europe’s blessings to carry his parliament’s legitimacy, but also, to empower his political machinations. Namely, approval over self-appointed powers to essentially appoint new Prime Ministers, and draft Libya’s election laws to his benefit. He already enjoys Egyptian support for this, enhancing its appeal as an expedient solution to European capitals.

Meanwhile, Khalifa Haftar, Libya’s aspiring next top dictator continues courting European attention to: legitimise his authoritarian rule that divides Libya; retain his impunity for an impressively broad and often horrific list of crimes; help him gain greater access to Libya’s state finances; channel legitimising finance to his Potemkin reconstruction project in Derna; and help him grow his power in western Libya. To this end, he brands himself as a necessary evil: the only one who can provide stability and security in an otherwise chaotic environment. Recently courting Europeans as a counter-migration partner, despite his son Saddam being key to trafficking networks. Similarly, paradoxically, he is trying to leverage his military reliance on Russia and Russia’s entrenchment across areas he nominally controls, to goad the US and EU into replacing Moscow.

Amidst this morass of petty political scheming sit the Libyan people, hoping Europeans will fulfil their promises to shepherd Libya’s transition. But, after years of failure Libyans have become nihilistic. While they may no longer believe that the EU wants to or can help them achieve political change, Libyans largely wish that Europeans would just show support whenever they risked their lives protesting. Or that Europeans would do something to push back against the worsening authoritarianism, political arrests, torture and murder in-between photo-ops with their Libyan partners responsible for this decline.

What’s Libya to Europe

Libya is undoubtedly less important to Europe, than Europe is to Libya, but, concerningly for all, it’s also far less important than it should be for Europe. Throughout their lengthy involvement in Libya’s transition, the EU and its member states have often suffered from prioritising the tactical over the strategic. Today, beset by crises from Ukraine to Gaza, Libya is deprioritised to ever greater depths.

Like the Libyans, Europeans are deeply divided over their interests and policy. While Paris and Rome remain the notorious face of European rivalries over Libya, they are not the only member-states involved. And each is suspicious that others will obstruct their political relationship building, or their ability to gather Libyan energy and other lucrative contracts.

The EU and its member-states have, however, maintained fairly stable, dominant priorities in Libya. Foremost is irregular migration. Here the EU and its member states try to stop migrant departures via broad engagements with Libya’s coastguard and interior ministry, despite their dubious credibility as partners; and informal deals with the Haftars that are just as shocking, and ineffective. More recently is removing (or at least dampening) the influence of rival actors (namely Turkey and Russia). This became inflamed in 2019 as Turkey used Libya to legitimise its energy ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, to the fury of Greece and Cyprus. Nowadays, Russia’s malicious presence a few hundred kilometres from Sicily and Libya’s centrality to Russian expansion in Africa and the Mediterranean is a quickly growing concern for European States.

Behind these imperatives, lay more general goals. Like stabilising Libyan politics, or at least containing Libya’s penchant for destabilising others. Or returning Libya to being a reliable energy provider, especially given recent needs to pivot from Russian dependencies. Given the importance of political stability as a functional prerequisite to other pursuits, supporting a political process remains the EU’s highest priority. Even if the member-states do not always share that priority, leading to potentially invaluable tools like operation Irini being almost completely defanged.

Libya and Europe need each other. But, after years of divided actors myopically pursuing self-serving goals, they are drifting apart. For Libyan leaders, Europe is a target to be tamed by migration, while for Europeans Libya’s difficulties are outweighing any potential benefits. As Libyan aspirations and European interests gradually die out, other states are benefitting. With little prospects that these other actors can bring peace, this only means that Europe is surrendering lingering influence over Libya, while remaining vulnerable to the crises Libya will continue exporting across the Mediterranean.

By: Tarek Megerisi

Source: ISPI

Contents
What’s Europe to LibyaWhat’s Libya to Europe

You Might Also Like

Caught in the Heat: How Egypt’s Energy Dreams Turned Into a Strategic Trap

The End of Vertical War: Operation Spiderweb and the Rise of Horizontal War-Making

Operation Spiderweb: The Death of Strategic Depth in the Drone Age

Canada Seeks Entry Into EU Defense Pact After Trump Missile Demand

Trump’s South Africa Standoff

Share This Article
Facebook Twitter Email Print
Previous Article Netanyahu’s Troubling Track Record: Time for Washington to Rethink Its Support Amid Gaza Crisis
Next Article Netanyahu’s speech to Congress demonstrates who is truly in charge in America
Leave a comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Stay Connected

TwitterFollow
YoutubeSubscribe

Latest News

Can Sanctions Win a War? The Case of Russia and Ukraine
Commentary Economy Eurasia Geopolitics
Frozen Ambitions: How the Kremlin Made the Arctic Its Next Battleground
Commentary Geopolitics
Why a Stronger Yuan Could Be China’s Boldest Bet Yet
Commentary Economy Geopolitics
Trump’s Self-Sabotage Is Hurting the Dollar—and America’s Future
Commentary Economy Geopolitics

Find Us on Socials

© GeoPolist. All Rights Reserved.
  • Submit an Op-Ed
  • Jobs
  • Post Jobs & Ads for Free
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?