EuroMeSCo announces its most recent publication, Paper 68: "Putting the Mediterranean Union in Perspective". The controversy surrounding French President Sarkozy’s proposal to create a “Mediterranean Union” of sorts has managed to stimulate a renewed interest in the Euro-Mediterranean region and a much-needed re-evaluation of the Barcelona Process.

This study seeks to enhance the present debate by providing an overview of the different views emerging in the main zones of the Euro-Med. The four distinct expert perspectives outlined – namely from Southern Europe, Germany, North Africa and Israel – highlight the main issues of contention, but also those around which consensus has rallied. Paper 68 takes stock of the EU’s past and current policy for the Mediterranean in order to determine its future potential within the UfM framework.

To read more, click here.

In the run-up to the EuroMeSCo Annual Conference, the EuroMeSCo Secretariat organised a 2nd Preparatory Meeting, in collaboration with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and with the support of the European Commission.

Taking place in Rome on 26-27 June, this meeting tackled three factors shaping the debate on the present state of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) and its future - namely security, securitization and reform. Despite differences in national outlook, security remains a prime concern in relations between EU countries and non-EU Mediterranean countries. As such, this meeting sought to identify the security risks currently present in the EMP. Security-based approaches have been met with much criticism, yet today's problems seem to relate less to security than to securitization. In fact, the importance and role of securitization are, more often than not, in stark contrast with the freedom, justice and security model that the EU has adopted both for itself and its neighbourhood. As a result, reform appears to have become a marginal issue within this framework - a situation suggesting that its role needs to be revived and perhaps even redefined. These were some of the issues explored at the Rome meeting.

To see the programme, please click here.

To access the guidelines underpinning the discussions of the Working Groups, please click here.