The Southern-Eastern Mediterranean littoral states constitute a complex and problematic region. Despite it, the European nations have been engaging this region to constitute a ring of well governed countries to the East of the European Union (EU) and on the borders of the Mediterranean for the sake of their own security and prosperity. It is because; stability and security in Europe are fundamentally linked to the stability and security of the Mediterranean area.
In November 1995, twelve North African and Middle Eastern governments gathered in Barcelona together with the representatives of the Fifteen European Union governments to sign the Barcelona Declaration of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership to attain long-term stability in the region. Currently, the EMP comprises the twenty-seven EU-member states and ten Mediterranean Partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey, which is also an EU candidate country) and Libya as observer since 1999). Malta and Cyprus, also original Euro-Med Partners, are now EU member states.
The Barcelona Process also known as European Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) was a Europeans initiative to engage Arab countries around the rim of the Mediterranean to develop economic, political, and cultural relationship based on comprehensive cooperation and solidarity. The EMP mandate allows EU member states and their Mediterranean counterparts to work together without replacing the other activities and initiatives undertaken in the interests of the peace, stability and development of the region. The EMP supports socio-political cohesion i.e. through regional integration, socialization for the enhancement of civil society and commercial norms, the rule of law, institutionalization, and economic and political integration. In this context, three sectors—political/security, economic/financial and cultural/social—received greater attention. These three pillars of the EMP consist of the following in greater detail and follow the dual regional (multilateral) and bilateral tracks established in the Madrid Peace Conference for the international relations among EMP members:
1. The definition of a common area of peace and stability through the reinforcement of the political and security dialogue;
2. The construction of a zone of shared prosperity through an economic and financial partnership and the gradual establishment of a free-trade area; and
3. The rapprochement between peoples through a social, cultural and human partnership aimed at encouraging understanding between cultures and exchanges between civil society.
The EMP is concentrating on ‘soft’ security and economic issues—good governance, education, human rights and democracy—to develop mutual confidence and trust, rather than ‘hard’ security issues of defense and military cooperation. It embraces an ideational dimension with cognitive and normative functions, as well as an interactive dimension, with coordinative and communicative functions. The Barcelona Declaration proposed for political and economic interdependency, which requires commonality of political and economic structures as the condition for constructing cooperative relations. It is because social homogeneity and commonality of political institutions and practices are essential to create regional institutions for dealing with the problems of political and economic interdependence.
Importantly, the European countries and Southern-Eastern Mediterranean countries have little commonality and homogeneity. The disparities in their political, social, economic and ideological outlook, to name a few, frustrate projects designed for establishing a zone of Peace, Stability, Prosperity and Security in the region. Many analysts look at the EU initiative with skepticism and question the appropriateness of applying the conceptual and analytical tools of regionalism to the Mediterranean area. They underline the plural form of this would-be region and deal with it as being less a region and more a geographical aggregate characterized by discontinuous dynamics and sub-areas of interactions with great problems and strong identities of their own.
Importantly, the primary focus of EU has been on the institutional reform, democracy promotion, and human rights projects in the Arab EMP countries. These projects, however, do not seem very attractive for the Arab partners in EMP. In reality the Arab states would only embrace those reforms, which would provide more legitimacy to the ruling regimes rather than jeopardizing the legitimacy of their ruling elites.
To conclude, the EMP, a nexus between the European Union and its Southern-Eastern Mediterranean neighboring states, provides a region-to-region integration framework for political, social, economic and security relations. Since 1995, the EMP has been endeavoring to cultivate and nurture a zone of peace, stability, prosperity and security in the Mediterranean region. In reality, however, the EMP seems inept in countering the challenges emanating from the increasing socio-political inequalities between the North and South of the Mediterranean rim; strong population growth and unemployment in the South; uncontrolled immigration into EU member states; illegal drug and arms trafficking; Palestinian/Israel conflict and above all the terrorist activities of radical Muslims in the Europe.
