ABSTRACT
In November 1995, at a major conference in the southern Spanish city of Barcelona – by then already the focus of Catalunyan aspirations for autonomy within the Spanish state, if not for full-blown independence from it – the European Commission spelled out how it anticipated its future relationship with the South Mediterranean region should develop. It sought, according to the Barcelona Declaration, which concluded the conference, to create a zone of shared peace, stability and prosperity throughout the Mediterranean basin.1 This was to be achieved through recourse to two prior experiences; the construction of the European Union itself and the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), better known as the Helsinki Conference, which had ushered in the relatively brief period of détente during the Cold War. The European experience was to pinpoint the way in which peace and prosperity could be achieved whilst the CSCE process highlighted the role to be played by collective security in achieving regional stability.
