ABSTRACT
The Barcelona Process and now the Union for the Mediterranean take it as a given that the progressive establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area (EMFTA), along with targeted financial assistance from the European Union, will create an area of shared prosperity and make a major contribution to the parallel goals of peace and stability. The assumption prompts several questions. First, the Member States of the European Union already belong to a free trade area, and more, in the EU’s single market. With the possible exception of Turkey, it is not proposed that the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries should join them. If the shared prosperity of Member States is dependent on their membership of the Union, how can partner countries achieve the same through the more limited aspirations of the EMFTA? Second, the EU has formed or is negotiating many other free trade areas throughout the world, with provisions that are much the same as those of the EMFTA. Many other countries are doing the same, including the USA, and the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Are European and Mediterranean countries’ agreements with each other any more significant than their equivalent arrangements with the rest of the world? Third, the goal of shared prosperity is also being pursued worldwide through the multilateral framework of the WTO. Are preferential trade agreements like the EMFTA any more than a patchwork of second-best options? Finally, the global economic crisis and parallel concerns over food security, resource depletion, climate change and other issues affecting the region have called into question the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the global free market ideal. Are the actual and proposed provisions of the regional trade agreements suitably adapted to the global challenges that Mediterranean countries now face?
