Brexit, the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU), is currently one of the hottest topics in European politics. In the referendum held on June 23, 2016, 51.9% of the British people voted to leave the EU. Recognizing the validity of the referendum results, the British government has been making a major effort to implement the Brexit decision by 2020.
Such a decision to leave the EU has created an environment of uncertainty and growing separatist sentiment across Europe. However, the EU is not a stranger to these kinds of attempts and decisions. Prior to Brexit, there was Grexit, the Greek governmentâs endeavor to leave the Eurozone through a referendum held on July 5, 2015. The attempt was stopped in its tracks by 61.31% of the Greek people who rejected the proposal. It did, however, ignite discussions on the stability of European integration. It reminded Switzerlandâs rejection of membership in European Economic Area in 1992, Norwayâs rejection of EU membership in 1994, Franceâs and the Netherlandsâ repudiation of the European Constitution in 2005.
Attempts or decisions to leave or to reject EU or EU institutions memberships have mainly been covered by studies dealing with European integration. Their primary focus has been on how the EU has been integrated thus far and what it is about the entity that appeals to its member states. Some of these studies have specifically delved into whether the rejection of or departure from the EU impacts European integration in the short or long term. They have approached European integration not only in political or economic terms but also with respect to identity. In addition, they have tried to understand how the European-ness of the states, or their sense of being European, is impacted by their decision to leave the EU. In Europe where European-ness is defined mostly with EU membership at least according to the European Commission, such studies try to see if there is erosion of a sense of European-ness within the states that have sought to leave or reject the EU.
However, there is another dimension that is often neglected. European-ness and European integration do not only depend on whether a state rejects or leaves the EU. A state might also not be part of European integration if the EU rejects its membership application, without the need that this state rejects being its part. An example to this happened in July 1987, when Morocco applied for full membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). In accordance with the procedure set out in Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome which declares âAny European state may apply to become a member of the Community,â Morocco officially applied for full membership in July 1987. Moroccoâs membership application to EEC actually meant its application to the European Communities, which required an application to the EEC as the only sub-organization open to further members, unlike the European Atomic Energy Committee (EAEC) and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). These three pillars structured the European Communities in 1987 before their transformation into the EU in 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty.1 Moroccoâs application was rejected outright by the European Commission in October of the same year. Among the very limited sources that analyzed this application, a report published by the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet on October 18, 1987 requires attention. The report referred to the Belgian journal Le Soir where it was stated that the European Commission would reject the membership applications of Turkey and Morocco who would eventually be disappointed. Le Soir, then, added that the European Commission would look for a way to kindly reject the membership applications of Turkey and Morocco. As the European Commission officer responsible for the Mediterranean Affairs by that time Claude Cheysson said:
Mr. Cheyssonâs declaration concerning the future of the membership applications of Morocco and Turkey membership applications to the EEC was far from passionate. When all is said and done, he was a rational European bureaucrat who was working for a European organization that had already determined who was and was not European. He openly described Turkey and Morocco as actors of another world that did not belong to Europe. Even though he cared more about Turkeyâs application, he recommended a different engagement other than full membership for both Turkey and Morocco. Mr. Cheysson considered Turkeyâs claims to European-ness, within the framework of Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome, to be more valid than those put forth by Morocco. Indeed, he did not believe that Morocco had any realistic chance of being accepted.The membership applications of Morocco and Turkey, two countries from another part of the world, are quite similar. The European [Economic] Community believes that it is quite important to develop bilateral relations with Turkey and Morocco in the final analysis. However, the club of twelve, as the founders of the European [Economic] Community, are deeply concerned about these statesâ membership applications to the organization. The application of Morocco, which is not geographically part of Europe, encountered judicial obstacles and therefore was rejected with no hesitation. The membership application of Turkey, on the other hand, was sent to the European Commission to be discussed in more detail. However, I do not believe that the Commission will respond to Turkey in a short time. In any case, the answer of the Commission will not be clear. I believe that another compromise solution must be found for the membership applications of Turkey and Morocco to the European [Economic] Community.
Among the applications of these two, Moroccoâs one does not seem at first glance to be out-of-the-ordinary foreign policy behavior. The European Commission gave all states the right to apply for membership as long as they were European. What Morocco had to do was to justify how European it was and did so accordingly. Eventually, its application was rejected because it was judged not to be European, at least geographically, as Mr. Cheyssonâs comments above demonstrate. So both Moroccoâs application for membership and the position of the European Commission can be viewed as normal according to the terms of Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome. However, the bases for its application were already quite weak because Morocco was not located on the European continent. The Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean Sea has separated Morocco from Europe for centuries. However, before submitting its letter of application, Morocco was already aware of its geographical location. The stipulation in Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome that membership applications could only come from European states, and the requirement that states applying for EEC membership also had to be members of the European Council. It was King Hassan II who took the initiative of the membership application, and he most certainly was not unaware of these criteria when he took this initiative. Because of all these reasons, the response to the Kingâs application was negative. Politically speaking, the non-European Morocco in terms of geography was left outside the EU. That was normal, ordinary and expected. But political scientifically speaking, there was an anomaly, something extraordinary and unexpected. A state located beyond the geographic confines of Europe would even claim that it was European. Yet, here was Morocco, an obviously non-European country in the eyes of the Europeans making up the EEC, laying claim to European-ness, an identity it had hoped would enable it to attain membership in the organization.
King Hassan IIâs claim of European Morocco despite Moroccoâs position out of the European geography is not the only extraordinary fact to analyze in the Kingâs European Morocco. Considering the struggle given to Europe in Morocco by the fifteenth century, which reached to an anticolonial level by the 1930s, the claim of European Morocco located European-ness just near other components of postcolonial Moroccan national identity such as Islam, Moroccan-ness and African-ness. Islam had come to the country through Arab conquest in the eighth century. It fueled its struggle with Europe as the missionary activities of the Portuguese were fought against in the fifteenth century. Moroccan-ness, as distinct from Muslim-ness (Islam), became a component of national identity with the rise of nationalism in the mid-1930s when the locals unified against the French and the Spanish Protectorates. African-ness became an element of national identity as the country fought against European colonialism within the framework of the 1961 Casablanca Conference with Morocco eventually gaining independence from France. All three components were essentially used in Moroccoâs centuries-old fight with Europe and served as the basis for its postcolonial national identity vis-Ă -vis Europe. Related with this, the Kingâs European Morocco shows that Morocco adopted European-ness to its postcolonial national identity which was created against Europe. When King Hassan II sent his application letter to EEC in 1987, he admitted that Morocco was one of these âany European states.â That is why the Kingâs European Morocco also tries to answer how the postcolonial national identity of Morocco which had been constructed by a process of unification against Europe evolved and came to a point to admit European-ness to itself. It argues that Morocco for King Hassan II had an amalgamated national identity with the unification of Islam, Moroccan-ness, African-ness and European-ness.
To get an idea of how this identity evolved and came to be used as the basis to the Kingâs European Morocco, it is necessary to critically examine the dynamics of postcolonial nationalism. This involves scrutinizing such subthemes as critique of colonialism (the feelings that make the colonized subjects stimulated to nullify the impacts of the colonizer on their lands after colonialism), inbetweenness (the mixed feeling coming from the cultural attribution of the colonized subjects to both their local culture and to the culture their former colonizer after colonialism) and admiration for Europe (the feeling that leads especially the rulers to model Europe after colonization) . In short, it entails an examination of the ongoing impact of the former colonizer on the identity of the former colonized after independence and regards the concept of hybridity within the orbit of inbetweenness. This influence can be found in symbols such as flags, languages and names of the former colonized states. For example, the British flag appears on the national flags of the former British colonies Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda and Tuvalu, while the French flag can be seen on the national flags of the former French colonies Central African Republic, Guadeloupe and Seychelles today. The widespread use of the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese and the current names of cities in former colonies are also major artifacts of colonialism. Examples of city names include Franceville and Libreville in the former French colony of Gabon, Malanville in the former French colony of Benin, Francistown in the former British colony of Botswana and Buenos Aires in the former Spanish colony of Argentina. The Kingâs European Morocco does not look for a French flag in the Moroccan one or French names in Morocco. Instead, it examines the role the French, through the French Protectorate, had on the development of postcolonial Moroccan identity, and how King Hassan II justified that Morocco was a European state according to the article 237 of the Treaty of Rome. All in all, it regards the membership to EEC as an impact of France on Morocco by referring to the French Protectorate in Morocco between 1912 and 1956.
To fully understand the basis to the Kingâs European Morocco, Moroccoâs status needs to be compared to countries having similar positions as well. In this regard, three major questions need to be answered. First, why has no other previously French-ruled African state applied to the EEC? Second, why did King Hassan II primarily refer to the French Protectorate and France to justify Moroccoâs European-ness and hardly touched at all upon the Spanish Protectorate and Spain that ruled the north of Morocco? Third, if the rejection of Moroccoâs claim of European-ness because it was not located on the European continent is valid, then how is it that the applications of Mal...