The economy of the Mediterranean region countries - which in the present study include Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, as well as Israel and Turkey - experienced a period of strong and dynamic economic development in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But since the 1980s these economies have experienced a much less dynamic evolution and tended toward stagnation. This paper by Oleh Havrylyshyn, presents an assessment of the experience of these economies in a framework of a broad trade strategy perspective for Mediterranean countries, and examines prospects for the future.
The economy of the Mediterranean region countries - which in the present study include Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, as well as Israel and Turkey - experienced a period of strong and dynamic economic development in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But since the 1980s these economies have experienced a much less dynamic evolution and tended toward stagnation. This paper by Oleh Havrylyshyn, presents an assessment of the experience of these economies in a framework of a broad trade strategy perspective for Mediterranean countries, and examines prospects for the future.
By establishing free trade for industrial products in 12 years, the European Union’s Association Agreements with countries in the Mediterranean region seek to promote accelerated economic growth. This paper reviews the literature and evaluates the economic benefits and costs for Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. It concludes that the benefits could be substantial, but only if accompanied by deep supplementary reforms, including extending trade liberalization to services and agriculture and on a multilateral basis, improving the environment for foreign direct investment, ensuring an adequate fiscal and exchange rate policy response, and strengthening European Union assistance.
Regional Integration in the Union for the Mediterranean: Progress Report monitors major trends and evolutions of integration in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The Report examines five domains of regional integration, namely trade integration, financial integration, infrastructure integration, movement of people, as well as research and higher education.
The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization is a welcome corrective to the tendency to present globalization as a homogenous concept, and the failure to describe how it operates in specific regions. Ribas-Mateos examines globalization and migration across the Mediterranean, using an innovative, integrated framework so as to map social places by describing how social, political, cultural, and economic forces are embedded within a globalizing environment. The author articulates an original and compelling narrative, mapping the Mediterranean as a global place where international and regional forces are intertwined in multiple threads. In doing so, she identifies two key components of globalization--affecting specifically forms of welfare and issues of mobility--in the context of a weakening European welfare state and the relocation and reinforcement of Mediterranean borders. Nine Mediterranean cities are investigated as "gateway" cities, which shape two major effects of globalization: welfare and mobility. The book challenges conventional North-South perspectives, and focuses and systematizes the way international migration should be conceptualized. The originality of the book results from the author's fieldwork, which is rich in descriptive detail, and from a theory centered around global perspectives. Seven case studies in Southern Europe--Algeciras, Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Naples, Turin, and Thrace--deal with issues related to migration and the welfare state. She also includes two ethnographies that represent two Mediterranean gateways in the North-South Mediterranean division: Tangiers (in Morocco) and Durres (in Albania), which are mapped as border-cities in the global Mediterranean context. Because of its intrinsically multidisciplinary nature, this superb volume will be of particular interest to academics and social science researchers as well as policymakers and international agencies. Natalia Ribas-Mateos is a Marie Curie fellow at the Mediterranean Laboratory of Sociology, Aix-en-Provence, France. Among her recent books are Una invitacin a las sociologa de las migraciones and El debate sobre la globalizacin.
During the 1990s, the economic and strategic importance of the Mediterranean will increase as a consequence of: (1) continuing large scale transshipment of oil through the Mediterranean, (2) growing U.S. and European trade with the Soviet Union via the Mediterranean - Black sea lanes, and (3) expanding trade between European Community member states in and outside the Mediterranean area under the provisions of the new European Community's economic integration of 1992. Thus, the importance of maintaining-free and secure passage through the Mediterranean will increase through the 1990s and into the next century. Unfortunately, growing instability and military power in the region present complex challenges directly threatening broader U.S. economic and security interests. This essay argues that the year 2000 will find three situations defining U.S. economic and security interests in the Mediterranean region. These three situations are: (1) changing economic and security relationships between western Europe, the Soviet Union, and the U.S., (2) growing economic crisis in the developing countries along the Mediterranean, and (3) continuing regional security problems and emerging new regional powers. A review of these three situations and related security issues precedes the presentation of a regional security strategy for the 1990s that focuses on achieving strategic stability in the region. If implemented, this strategy offers stabilizing influences in the Mediterranean and supports the broader U.S. economic and security interests expected to emerge by the year 2000.
A comprehensive study of the nexus between democratization and security in the Mediterranean, which are seen as essentially complementary yet threatened by political trends witnessed since the September 2001 attacks. Contributors from a variety of European and Mediterranean countries address the impact of a restructured security system, Europe's effort to establish an autonomous security and defence policy, and attempts among the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) to build regional security regimes.
The Arab upheaval and the world's biggest financial crisis after the Great Depression were almost simultaneous in their occurrence. The Mediterranean economies now face a dual challenge of a political and financial restructuring in the light of a shaky economic pedestal on which they stand. In light of this socio-political and economic shift in both inland and in world markets, this book offers a thorough analysis on problems, prospects and the way ahead for the financial integration of the South-Mediterranean region. Several perspectives on financial integration and policy recommendations are put forward from a leading group of researchers specializing on the Mediterranean region.
Observers and students of globalization struggle with two questions. Why are globalizing processes so unevenly distributed between poor and wealthy countries? What effect does this uneven distribution have on the everyday lives of ordinary people? The contributors to this volume find answers to these questions in the Mediterranean, a region divided between the relatively wealthy people of the north shore, who are engaged with Europe and modernized, and their poorer neighbours to the south, who strive daily to meet the same standards of living and modes of governance as their more Westernized neighbours to the north. In these two regions, divergent histories, economies, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, education systems, and political structures lead to explanations for uneven globalization and disparities in the achievement of individual and collective autonomy, in the Mediterranean region and around the world. These illuminating case studies show that globalization for the people of North Africa and the Near East has precipitated both a desire to build stronger ties with an ever-wary Europe and a search for individual and collective autonomy, particularly in the cultural realm. The seeds of discontent sown by these struggles underpin the demonstrations for political autonomy that sparked the Arab Spring.
