ABSTRACT
The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) was criticized during its early years, among other things, for an uneven development of the three baskets of the Barcelona Declaration of 1995. While the second basket, outlining plans to develop an economic and financial partnership, was pursued with the greatest vigour, and the first basket, concerning a political and security partnership, became the subject of regular meetings between senior foreign ministry officials, the third basket-devoted to a partnership in social, cultural and human affairs-was pursued only half-heartedly. Why this was so is not firmly established, but probable reasons that led to this relative neglect of the third basket include: the assumption that economic liberalization was the key to the success of the whole Barcelona Process (thus prioritizing the second basket); the top-down approach taken to partnership-building, which lent itself much more easily to the development of the first two baskets; and the EU’s relative lack of practical experience with the cultural dimension of partnership envisaged in the third basket. Nevertheless, the third basket did feature in the Barcelona Declaration, both as a result of the genesis of EU approaches to partnership-building across the Mediterranean, which in terms of methodology can be traced back to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and because of the importance acquired by human rights in the Community’s ideological baggage by the 1990s.
