The Crisis in North Africa: Implications for Europe and Options for EU Policymakers

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The Arab Spring dramatically transformed the strategic environment on Europe’s southern border. Long-tenured autocrats in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia – brutal as they may have been to their own citizens – had brought a measure of stability and predictability to the Mediterranean. But tumultuous political developments since the leaders of all three countries fell in 2011 have created a range of new threats that European policymakers will be forced to address in the years to come.