ABSTRACT
Since its inception in November 1995, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership has
created various links between the now-37 member states of the European Union
and the countries of the southern littoral of the Mediterranean. Little concern
about the existence or the fostering of such links was shown by policymakers
until then, although the occasional scholar tried to develop the notion that the
countries bordering the Mediterranean constituted, particularly in historical
times, an important strategic, political, economic and even a cultural entity.
Fernand Braudel’s seminal 1966 study of the Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World at the time of Philip II of Spain is the chief modern
example of this. In classical times, Greek and Roman authors were also greatly
interested in what brought the peoples of the Mediterranean littoral together –
rather than what set them apart.
