The EU’s Mediterranean policy

The phrase ‘an economic giant but a political pygmy’ might well have been coined to characterise the EU’s relationship with the Mediterranean nonmember countries. Until the 1990s, the EU’s Mediterranean policy lacked a clear sense of direction and fell well short of its rhetoric. However, in 1994 the EU and its twelve Mediterranean ‘partners’ launched a diplomatic process designed to add a high-profile multilateral platform to a new generation of bilateral trade and cooperation agreements.1 Their efforts culminated in the Barcelona Conference of November 1995, when foreign ministers and diplomats from twenty-seven governments, along with representatives of the European Commission, agreed a comprehensive Joint Declaration and Work Programme.