Report of the Focus Group with Stakeholders in the Middle-East

As part of the MENARA project, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (IFI – AUB) organized a focus group in Beirut (Lebanon) on 2 November 2018 with twelve scholars, experts, civil society leaders and activists from Lebanon and the Arab Middle East. The discussions were linked to the general aims of the MENARA project – characterizing the regional order, defining scenarios and discussing policy options for the EU – and was initially (informally) structured in four parts (though participants themselves were allowed to take the discussion in directions that made sense to them): 1. Regional rivalries and new regional order<br> 2. State–society dynamics<br> 3. The role of the EU and other external actors<br> 4. Future scenarios This report contains the summary of the discussion during the focus group.