How does Mediterranean Instability Affect the EU's Security and Energy Policy?

Libya and Algeria , two of the EU’s most important oil and gas suppliers, have been facing a period in which growing social and political  complexity  have emerged as threatening elements to their stability . Contradictions  concerning democratization,  transparency  and  good  governance, usually regarded as ‘the lesser evils’ in  autocratic  regimes , have now become  emergency  issues. The   esult  is  that today the EU considers the two countries necessary but unreliable partners – a judgment made even more significant in the light of the  European Union’s policy aimed at the diversification policy of its energy supply. However,  even though  the  Southern  Mediterranean countries  have become relatively less important compared to the Middle East and Central Asia, the EU does not seem to be willing or even in a position to give  up  its  primacy  in  the Mediterranean  area .  The recent  signature  of  a Memorandum of  Understanding with Algeria and the growing efforts put in the Libyan transition process, combined with an awareness that neither China nor the US can rely on  easy access to  the area, increases the ambivalence of the EU’s foreign and  energy  policy . The EU’s future  orientation will depend  to a great  extent  on how events  will  turn  in these two crucial countries.