ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts an international political economy approach, linking economics and politics to analyze the likelihood of Arab countries integrating within a Euro-Mediterranean or an Arab scope, or both. It reviews the literature that explores the conceptual links between economics and politics when dealing with regionalism. The chapter addresses some policy implications for both the Arab countries and the European Union (EU) to reconcile Arab and Euro-Arab economic integration and political cooperation. It shows that the countries of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are classified as EU Mediterranean countries. The Mediterranean region is far from being homogeneous in economic, cultural or political terms. To begin with, the geographical unity of the Mediterranean is more convention than reality. The Mediterranean is a complex reality made up of the interactions among different economic, political and cultural systems. When dealing with the alleged incompatibility between EU-Mediterranean and Arab integration, some clarification is needed.
