Mainstreaming Human Rights in EuroMed Bilateral Relations: ‘The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions’

This article, focusing on the bilateral dimension of the EuroMed relations related to migration conceptualises the existence of a human rights (HR) mainstreaming duty in EU external policies and atempts to examine the related problems of the application and performance of such a duty based on the analysis of the human rights clauses included in the Association Agreements (AAs) within the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) framework, in combination with the mechanism of the “non-afection clause” for formal and informal Readmission Agreements concluded at both the EU (EURs) and national levels. Just as Pot Luck, Emile Zola’s most acerbic satire, examines the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life to reveal a multitude of betrayals and depict a veritable ‘melting pot’ of moral and sexual degeneracy, so this article will pinpoint a similar ‘Victorian’ hypocrisy underlying the HR mainstreaming conception in EuroMed relations and its implementation through the tool of conditionality. Finally, the work will explore the positive goals of exporting the new conception of an HR mainstreaming duty elaborated for trade agreements into the new generation of AAs and EURs.