Third-country level 124

When it comes to examining vertical coordination on the third-country level, the focus is on the coordination between the EU-delegation and the member states’ embassies as well as between the EIB and the member states’ embassies.

As shown before, with the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU delegations have become the main actors when it comes to representing the EU externally and to leading EU internal coordination of diplomatic action abroad. However, and although having replaced the national foreign services in this regard, they only have a complementary function to the national embassies here. In fact, as opposed to the latter, the EU delegation is not a ‘specialised’ entity but ‘deals with ‘political’ and ‘technical’ issues at once’ (GATTI, 2016:286). Depending on the region, this has often led to discrepancies in the past719 _{and this although both actors have a historical obligation to}

‘cooperate in ensuring that the common positions and joint actions adopted by the Council are complied with and implemented’ (Art. 10 Treaty of Amsterdam) (GATTI, 2016:217). Similarly, Articles 32 and 35 of the TEU require the EU delegations and national embassies to ‘cooperate’

719 _{For example, one recurrent point of division has been the role of the delegations with regard to consular services (HELWIG, IVAN}

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and to ‘contribute to formulating and implementing the common approach’, amongst other things, by ‘exchanging information’ and ‘carrying out joint assessments’. In fact, one problem here, as pointed out by Gatti (2016:218), is certainly the fact that it is not clear which kind of information the two bodies are supposed to share. Second, and as highlighted by Helwig, Ivan and Kostanyan (2013:66), the sharing of information ‘still suffers from a rather unstructured and ad-hoc nature of reporting’. Moreover, so the authors, information disclosed by the EU delegations is often ‘filtered’ in order to disguise the source of information. Finally, in some countries, the EU delegations may simply not dispose of the technical means of sharing information safely with the national embassies.

As a result of this, and as opposed to the horizontal dimension (intergovernmental), bilateral vertical cooperation on the third-country level, i.e. cooperation between the EU delegation and the national embassies, does exist, however, the degree of coordination is rather limited (see Figure 27) and this despite the fact that ‘the diplomatic missions of the Member States and the Union delegations in third countries and at international organisations shall cooperate and shall contribute to formulating and implementing the common approach’ (Art. 16 of the Treaty of Lisbon). As this suggests, the EU delegation is supposed to coordinate between the national embassies and speak for the EU as a whole,720 _{whereas the embassies are likewise obliged to}

adhere to the common positions of the EU. However, and as regards the local level in Rabat, there is paradoxically no fixed framework for bilateral European energy cooperation and coordination. And whilst the EU-delegation and the embassies regularly meet at the Head of Mission level (= ambassadors of the member states) to coordinate policies721 _{– in fact, they are}

required to share information on a mutual basis (Art. 5, COUNCIL 2010/427/EU) –722 _the

information exchanged is reciprocally limited723 _{and, overall, there seems to be little contact, at}

least as far as energy topics are concerned. Indeed, cooperation between the French embassy and the delegation focuses on commercial and market access-related questions, whereas energy topics are neglected (Interview French Embassy to Morocco, 2016). This is in line with the findings in the literature according to which the EU delegations are generally willing to share information, contrary to the national embassies whose ‘choice to share information at the diplomatic level’ is expected to ‘be motivated by national interests’ in the long run (GATTI, 2016:218) and who overall, ‘seem to have a preference for clustering in smaller groups with common interests and do so without involving the EU delegation’ (HELWIG, IVAN and KOSTANYAN, 2013:8).

Similarly, bilateral cooperation between the EIB and the embassies is as good as non-existent and so is coordination (see Figure 27). However, the bank maintains close ties with both the KfW and the AFD (Interview EIB, 2017). The same holds true for the UfM and the embassies which do not have any noteworthy relations. And whilst there are some multilateral frameworks for coordination, their energy focus is, however, limited:

1) Groupe des chefs de coopérations européens (there is no official name for this group):

The Group unites all bilateral representations of the EU and Switzerland, i.e. the EU delegation, the embassies of the EU member states and Switzerland, as well as the

720 _{EP (Accessed on 05 December 2018).}

721 _{Euromedrights (Accessed on 10 December 2017).}

722 _{Council (Accessed on 10 November 2018).}

723 _{In fact, as pointed out by Helwig, Ivan and Kostanyan (2013:67), ‘the setup of the EEAS initially explicitly mentioned that Union}

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principal European donors EIB, EBRD, AFD, KfW and the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).724 _{Meetings are global and cover a wide range of sectors and topics,}

i.e. they are not energy sector specific and issues related to energy may or may not be discussed, depending on their urgency and the will of the participants to address them (Interview German embassy to Morocco, 2017). Nonetheless, it remains the only relevant multilateral framework for potential dialogue on energy policy issues. Meetings take place twice a year.

2) Groupe principal des partenaires (GPP) (Principal Partners Group): Created on the

initiative of the Moroccan office of the African Development Bank (AFDB) and in collaboration with the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),725 _{the GPP holds regular meetings with the principal donors (both international}

and European) present in Morocco: the WB’s Social Development Fund (SDF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the Islamic Development Bank (ISDB), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Qatar Development Fund (QDF), the EU delegation, the EIB and the EBRD, as well as the AFD and the KfW. Another participant is the Belgian Technical Cooperation. The aim of these meetings which take place every two months and whose focus is financial/technical,726 _{is to share}

and exchange information on the different operational approaches in order to achieve a certain harmonisation of interventions. As the meetings are global, i.e. not sector specific, they are supposed to be complemented by the so-called Groupes thématiques.

3) Groupes thématiques: These groups are sector specific (and thus cyclical) and are

supposed to be either organised either by the GPP administration or their members727

whereby the EU-delegation generally delegates the organisation of these groups to the embassies of the EU member states. Corresponding meetings are supposed to take place once a year. However, with respect to energy, they take place rarely or not at all (the last time such a meeting took place was in 2013). According to the interview partners, this is due to a lack of interest in multilateral exchange, notably from the Moroccan side, but also from the European side. In fact, in the opinion of the interviewees, Morocco is generally more interested in bilateral dialogue patterns. This applies even more so to energy which is considered to be a strategic domain. But the EU has also shown little interest given that most of the intra-European meetings, i.e. among the European donors, already take place within the framework of the NIP, either in Brussels or in Rabat.

4) Informal ad-hoc ‘NIF’ meetings’: As just mentioned, in addition to the regular meetings

held in Brussels, the local representatives of the NIP partners also happen to meet in Rabat informally on an ad-hoc basis as necessary. Overall, these meetings were given a clear preference over the more formal frameworks by the interview partners who consider them to be rather efficient and more productive (Interview German Embassy to Morocco, 2017; EEAS, 2017; EIB, 2017).

724 _{Other than its other European partners, the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) is not involved in any cooperation or}

coordination processes at the EU level, but only operates on the ground.

725 _{AFDB (Accessed on 09 August 2017).}

726 _{Portail Sud Maroc (Accessed on 12 November 2018).}

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By contrast and as shown before, although the UfM certainly plays a role when it comes to regional coordination (i.e. coordination between European, Moroccan and other member countries), it is not particularly active within Morocco. Overall, it can be stated that the UfM only plays a minor role in the establishment of consistency on the local level. In fact, it has not been identified as a relevant actor for the establishment of consistency by the interviewees and whilst it maintains some contact with the EU delegation in Rabat, it is not very effective with the national embassies. This corresponds with the preliminary findings of the MEDRESET study carried out by Bianchi, Colantoni, Mascolo and Sartori in 2018 (22), according to which there is a lack of knowledge amongst EU staff about multilateral European energy projects on the local level. By contrast, to realise its objectives, the UfM works closely with the Moroccan energy actors on the ground. For example, it is in close contact with MEM and MASEN regarding investments and the promotion of RES and energy efficiency. By contrast, with ONE, it rather cooperates on the integration of energy and water which is expected to be a huge problem in the future (Interview UfM, 2017).

Figure 27: Vertical coordination on the third-country level

EU-delegation-Member states

Unified strategy

Establishing common parameters/priorities

Search for consensus

Consultation Information-sharing No interaction Sometimes achieved Not achieved Achieved No c o o rd . L im it ed co o rd . E xt en si ve c o o rd . EIB-Member states Unified strategy Establishing common parameters/priorities

Search for consensus

Consultation Information-sharing No interaction Sometimes achieved Not achieved Achieved No c o o rd . L im it ed co o rd . E xt en si ve c o o rd .

Source: Own elaboration based on empirical research.