ABSTRACT
Before advancing to the discourses of the EU on the Mediterranean, it is important to contextualise and foreground these practices. This chapter will therefore take a snapshot of the levels of economic development of countries from the North (EU members, accession countries (at time of writing) and Turkey and Israel) and south (Arab partners) that give rise to the hegemony of the EU in the Mediterranean area. A good level of economic development of a country is here taken to refer to its citizens having a decent standard of living including living a long and healthy life, having political freedoms and enjoying an adequate education system. This definition is in line with the United Nation’s understanding of the concept of development. This reality check of the economic, political and cultural challenges will provide an analysis of the structural conditions which bring about the often cited and often mentioned development gap between the North and South. This chapter thus serves as a context chapter on the EuroMediterranean Partnership prior to the empirical chapters. Thus it also discusses the problems and opportunities of the EMP and gives some updated data on the progress made as well as the main problems of project implementation.
