Emergence and Consolidation of a ‘Model’: The European-Mediterranean Partnership and Beyond

In the previous chapter, we have explored how the need to contain the deleterious effects of illegal immigration prompted several players within the European Community to review the core of its long historical relationship with the Mediterranean countries. In this vein, the post-Essen European Council meeting introduced a novel precedent to Euro-Mediterranean relations by highlighting two important developments. First, the European Union (EU) was interested, for the first time, in linking the economic, political and social spheres into one coherent whole. Second, the EU’s economic philosophy under these new arrangements significantly differed from past practices since they explicitly adopted a market-led approach of development celebrating the ability of open free trade areas to simultaneously provide sustainable peace, economic development and prosperity. These two new developments epitomize what I call the ‘Model’ which characterizes all EU policies initiated after the European-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP). In this chapter, I will first highlight the main components of the EMP agreement with a focus on policies that consolidated this ‘Barcelona Process’ vision through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), Barcelona 2005 initiative and, most recently, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).