High Representative Catherine Ashton has recently launched a document on EU Southern Neighborhood Policy after her second visit to Cairo, enhancing the importance of centering EU aid among the development of three priorities in the region: Money, Mobility and Market, or as she has called it, the 3 M’s priorities.

“It is important to stress again that we see our work in this region as a collaborative approach with the Arab League and with the countries of this region,” Baroness Ashton said. However, “the collaboration with these countries, namely, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya can only happen in the proportion of the reforms introduced in respect of our common values”, EEAS secretary general declared today in human rights’ committee meeting in the European Parliament.

Leaving the issues of human rights and justice in a “implicit” field, the key issues, for Ashton, fell into three groups, she said: resources – “the money, the ability that we have to be able to support the economies here and to support economic growth and jobs, both through greater investment and also through grants.”Mobility – “the ability for students and business people, for example, to be able to benefit from greater access to Europe. We are very conscious of the young population of this region and the educational opportunities that perhaps could be offered to them.” And, finally, market access – “the capacity to be able to ensure that there is good access to the markets of Europe, not just in terms of opening markets but also ensuring that businesses can take advantage of those markets.”

Whilst there is an ample accord among the proposals, there are differences between member states over how the factor "conditionality" should be imposed, that is to say, when exactly has a country failed to meet the EU “expectations” or not, and the proportion of aid that should be attributed according to different levels of compliance.

On last week, a number of EU officials have explained that the aim seemed to be “creating a sliding scale", with democratic developments to be measured every year aligned with specific criteria to achieve certain goals. If the country moves up to the “next level” it will access more funds.

In contrast, there is the inherent problem of the EU countries that wish to protect vested interests: Italy with Libya, France towards Tunisia and Spain in relation to Morocco and the consequent trend to limit competition in some spaces.