During the anti-regime uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, women from all walks of life were as ready as men to take to the streets to protest against the ineptitude and transgressions of their countries’ governments. Their courage was particularly noteworthy given that they suffered not only the violence of the regimes’ attempts to suppress protests by force, as did their male counterparts, but also a systematic targeting by security forces who attempted to break the women’s spirits through attacks on their honour and bodily integrity. The female presence and agency in the Arab Spring encouraged activists in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya to expect an equitable role for women in the political transition processes that followed the fall of the authoritarian regimes in those countries. However, the female input in those political transitions has been scant. Moreover, in all three countries, established women’s rights are increasingly under attack and violence against women is on the rise. This article applies a gendered perspective to explore the upheavals of the Arab Spring and the political transitions in the three countries, and inquires into the insecurities that women have suffered since early 2011.

In 2004 the European Union launched its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) with a view to living up to its image as a 'force for good' in its dealings with neighbouring countries. 1 The European Security Strategy of 2003 had aspired to create 'a world seen as offering justice and opportunity for everyone' and affirmed the EU's intention to work proactively towards this end. 2 At first glance, the ENP appears to uphold this ambition to be a positive force in international relations rather well. The 2004 ENP strategy paper asserts that the EU wants to promote 'stability, security and well-being for all' by the use of incentives ('carrots') in lieu of sanctions ('sticks') and to foster cooperation in areas of mutual consent and interest. 3 Moreover, the new financial instrument for the ENP came into force on 1 January 2007 and represents a noticeable increase in money allocated over previous EU aid programmes to these same countries. The policy thus appears remarkably balanced in its attention to interest and values, soft in respect of the absence of elements of coercion and rather generous in its offer of material assistance. However, even at the end of 2006 there were already signs of a generalized 'ENP fatigue' among neighbouring countries, and in June 2007 the Union acknowledged this by embracing the German EU presidency's plan to revive the policy. 4 What explains such lack of interest? While the causes are undoubtedly varied, we will argue here that part of the explanation lies in the failure of the EU fully to vindicate its assertion that the ENP is a positive-sum game.This article will examine the EU's claim to be a positive force for neighbouring countries by way of exploring its predisposition to ethical action. The first section will survey the current debate on ethics in the field of International Relations and provide a conceptual model for how to gauge the EU as a 'force for good'. The second section will look at how the Union frames its vision that the ENP will generate 'stability, security and well-being for all', and the final section will consider whether the European Neighbourhood Policy is ethically sound.

The 2016 EU Global Strategy and the 2015 ENP review have made stabilisation of the ENP area one of their main priorities. Our argument here, however, is that the Global Strategy and the ENP review not only seek to mitigate the numerous crises currently affecting the neighbourhood. They also aim to address a set of intra-EU vulnerabilities linked to events in the ENP area that are threatening the EU's own ontological security. We employ narrative analysis to explore how insecurity in the EU and in the ENP area is affecting the EU's relation to the neighbourhood-other and its understanding of the EU-self. Our main findings point to that the Global Strategy and the ENP review provide ample measures to stabilise the neighbourhood. However, whether they have provided a sufficiently compelling narrative to enable the emergence of new emotional structures for the EU and its member states to make sense of themselves and their relation to the neighbourhood-other remains an open question.

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The idea of the European Union being increasingly contested, whether globally or at home, is a frequently reiterated notion. It is believed that such challenges to the European integration stem from a number of diverse but interlinked global and intra-EU crises that, combined, amount to the current 'perfect storm' affecting the EU and its foreign, security and defence policy. We will explore here how the EU is being put to the test in terms of the norms and fundamental values which guides its foreign policy. It is an important issue within the broader debates of the European crises, as such norm contestation may have a deeper structural and longer-term effect on the EU's external action and its 'resilience' as an international actor.We employ insights from the norm contestation literature to scrutinize a number of the most important current challenges articulated against EU foreign policy norms in recent years, whether at the global, 'glocal' or intra-EU level.The idea that the European Union is being increasingly contested, whether globally or at home, is a notion frequently expressed by high-level EU representatives as well as in contemporary academia. For example, the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, stated in a letter to European leaders that to his mind "[t]he challenges currently facing the European Union are more dangerous than ever before in the time since the signature of the Treaty of Rome"