Part 7 International Influences and Interactions, 7.6 The European Union and the Constitution-making Processes in the Arab World: Observer or Actor?

The Mediterranean Sea, which connects Europe to the North African and West Asian states, has long been the stage of a narrative of a lasting dialogue between Europe and the Arab-Islamic world,1 a dialogue on economy, culture, and political issues but a narrative of a militant and colonial history whose traces are in certain contexts still clearly visible. Debates on Eurocentric worldviews and a specific approach of Western thinking on North African and West Asian countries and cultures, often compressed in the term of “Orientalism”,2 have accompanied the...