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.
This book provides a comprehensive study into the promotion of regional integration as a central pillar of European Union (EU) relations with the rest of the world. It is a strategy to deal with a core security challenge: the transformation of conflicts and, in particular, regional conflicts. Yet to what extent has the promotion of regional integration been successful in transforming conflicts? What can we regard as the core mechanisms of such an impact? This volume offers a comprehensive assessment of the nexus between promoting integration and conflict transformation. The authors systematically compare the consequences of EU involvement in eight conflicts in four world regions within a common framework. In doing so, they focus on the promotion of integration as a preventative strategy to avoid conflicts turning violent and as a long-term strategy to transform violent conflicts by placing them in a broader institutional context. The book will be of use to students and scholars interested in European foreign policy, comparative regionalism, and conflict resolution.
This publication examines the importance of trade in services for the integration of non-EU members into the European Single Market. Further liberalisation is found to be a critical factor to deeper integration with the enlarged EU, which accounts for a quarter of global GDP and foreign direct investment. The planned Euro-Mediterranean free trade area for goods is judged as a positive first step, but additional measures are needed for deeper integration, including liberalisation of services trade. The study gives a detailed assessment of individual sectors, including core services relating to transport, telecommunication, financial markets and electricity, as well other markets such as tourism, IT and distribution services.
Recent efforts by the United States and its allies to promote democracy, security, and stability in the Middle East owe much to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) – also known as the Barcelona Process – an important region-building plan in the Mediterranean region since 1995. The Convergence of Civilizations represents the output of an innovative and much needed collaborative project focused on the EMP. Editors Emanuel Adler, Beverly Crawford, Federica Bicchi, and Rafaella A. Del Sarto have set out to show that regional security and stability may be achieved through a cultural approach based on the concept of regional identity construction, and aim to take stock of the EMP in relation to this goal. The contributors to this collection focus on the obstacles Mediterranean region construction faces due to post 9/11 regional and global events, the difficulties of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, tensions between the EU and the US over Iraq, and the expected consequences of EU enlargement. They also seek to bring the EMP and region-making practices to the attention of American scholars in order to promote a more fertile academic exchange. Ultimately, the contributors demonstrate that the EMP and related region-making practices, while failing so far to promote the development of a Mediterranean regional identity and to achieve regional stability, suggest nonetheless a viable model for regional partnership and cooperation, and thus, for preventing a 'clash of civilizations' in the long haul. The Convergence of Civilizations will be an important tool for meeting the current global challenges being faced by nation-states as well as those in the future.
"Explores European foreign policy and the degree of European Union success in proposing itself as a valid international actor, drawing from the expertise of scholars and practitioners in many disciplines. Addresses issues past and present, theoretical and practice-oriented, and country- and region-specific"-- Provided by publisher.
Individual countries of the Maghreb have achieved substantial progress on trade, but, as a region they remain the least integrated in the world. The share of intraregional trade is less than 5 percent of their total trade, substantially lower than in all other regional trading blocs around the world. Geopolitical considerations and restrictive economic policies have stifled regional integration. Economic policies have been guided by country-level considerations, with little attention to the region, and are not coordinated. Restrictions on trade and capital flows remain substantial and constrain regional integration for the private sector.
The focus of this book is on the fifteen-member European Union but its coverage extends to many other bodies which form part of today's Europe, such as the Council of Europe, the European Economic Area and Western European Union.
With the creation of the Mediterranean partnership and the recent move towards the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean in 2008, a new emphasis is placed on the Mediterranean in the study of European Integration. This book brings together a collection of experts to address this important new area of study and discuss issues such as development, aid, labour, markets, human capital investment, Europeanization and institutional reform.
This volume offers to compare and explain variances of regionalism in Asia by disclosing the distinctive features of regional arrangements and how they evolved during the 1990s and 2000s against the background of a changing global environment. Moreover, it takes up a genuinely ‘inter-Asian’ perspective. By analysing and comparing diverse manifestations of regional integration agreements across Asia and its different sub-regions, it sets out to track their common characteristics and sub-regional facets with respect to their establishment, design and consequences. In addition, political processes accompanying their negotiation and implementation are scrutinized. The analysis encompasses nine case studies written by renowned scholars who together as a group combine an extraordinary mixture of different disciplinary backgrounds as well as expertise on shapes and processes of regional integration in different parts of Asia. The case studies seize on some of the most important features and controversial issues characterizing the second regionalism. Such are the emergence and impact of overlapping FTAs, regional financial and sub-regional economic integration and cooperation, power and the politics of regional integration as well as the nexus between conflict resolution, state failure and regional integration.
'International Handbook on the Economics of Integration edited by Miroslav Jovanovi? provides timely and rich academic contributions to considerations of the widest array of integration-related issues. European integration has been providing an inspiration to a number of academics and researchers. the Handbook is a recognition of the dynamic and strong solidarity of European integration. At the same time, the European Union often provided an example for integration schemes throughout the world which spread enormously since the mid-1990s. Leading experts from all continents contributed to this Handbook which will be a valuable input into academic and policy-making discussions and actions.' - José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission
