Looks at the provisions and potential for the Partnership, which formally established in November 1995 as a series of bilateral free trade agreements between the European Union and individual countries of on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Among the perspectives are who will benefit, the global Euro-Mediterranean partnership, regionalism and the Mediterranean, social feasibility and the costs of the free trade zone, lessons from southeast Asia, and security implications. The 17 articles first appeared in the Journal of North African Studies 3/2 (summer 1998). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Established in 1995, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership aims to create a free trade area including 30 countries and 800 million people by early in the 21st century. This book offers an assessment of the Partnership and its aims.
Focusing on the principal challenges facing the Euro-Mediterranean partnership since the signing of the Barcelona Declaration in November 1995, this study assesses past European policies towards the region.
The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was formed in 1995 in Barcelona. In this volume, concepts of democracy, civil society, human rights and dialogue among civilizations in the Mediterranean region are addressed in the context of the new Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.
Although most Arab countries have endorsed the European Union's proposal for an Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in principle, they also harbor serious reservations about its conceptual and security aspects and its future impact on their economies and on the peace process in the Middle East. The main concern is that the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Zone and its related rules of socio-economic conduct would expose fragile Arab industries to strong external competition and destroy indigenous enterprise. As long as the EU continues to follow a one-sided approach, with differential treatment for Israeli and Arab partners, the Arabs will continue to be ambivalent partners in the Barcelona process. This is evident from the cases of Tunisia and Morocco, which have signed partnership agreements with the EU but are now expressing serious doubts about the viability of the process. Further, the EU's concept of politico-security cooperation is geared toward conflict prevention, crisis management, and the introduction of CBMs, rather than on conflict resolution and the establishment of a balanced strategic system in the Mediterranean. The EU's responses to these Arab perceptions and misgivings will decide the future success of the EMP. It may be concluded that if the EU persists in its self-centered approach to Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, the EMP project is unlikely to materialize. This is particularly applicable to the economic partnership, which must be based on technology transfer and infrastructure support rather than trade liberalization, and to the security partnership, which should focus on conflict resolution and strategic balance rather than on maintaining the status quo.
This title was first published in 2003. In this study Ricardo Gomez traces the origins of the external Mediterranean policy of the European Union (EU) and examines in detail the negotiations that shaped the policy and its impact. Combining historical analysis with case studies of the Euro-Med partnership initiative, EU policy on Algeria and the EU's involvement in the Middle East peace process, he covers a diverse array of issues that will appeal to scholars across a variety of sub-disciplines of political science and international relations.
The creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 was seen, at the time, as a forward-thinking foreign policy which would strengthen ties between Europe and the Mediterranean Arab states. Since that time, however, almost none of this initial ambition has been translated into positive, successful policy. Twenty years on from the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (now the Union for the Mediterranean), this book collects some of the most influential articles published in the Mediterranean Politics journal since 1995 – and suggests what these articles tell us about the state of relations between Europe and the Middle East. The selection of articles gives a sense of the way in which analytical debate has changed in the journal’s lifetime, a lifetime which has seen the journal at the forefront of academic study on a variety of issues in the Mediterranean region. As such, the selection is naturally a reflection of the different periods from which the articles are taken, and, taken together, they paint a picture of how the Euro-Mediterranean partnership has been reshaped over time.
The tension between the aim of creating sustainable multilateral region-building dynamics and the need to find more differentiated and flexible forms of cooperation has been ever-present in Euro-Mediterranean relations. The proliferation of different and partially overlapping initiatives in recent years – the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean – is a plain expression of this tension. The 2011 episodes of regime-change in the Arab world have once again placed the debate about differentiation in EU’s relations with Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries at the top of the Union’s foreign policy agenda. This book contributes to theoretical and practical debates on whether differentiation processes can aid or hinder policy convergence processes and region-building efforts more widely. The contributions to this collection assess the actual significance and consequences of differentiation in Euro-Mediterranean relations through sector-specific in-depth analyses, covering issue areas as varied as environmental policy, migration, foreign and defence policy, trade, energy, civil protection and democracy promotion. The particular angle and comprehensive analysis of this book will make it of great interest for both scholars and policy makers alike in a moment when Euro-Mediterranean are in need of a thorough rethink. This book was based on a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.
