Bilateral Relations In The Mediterranean

This timely book assesses national and supranational bilateral approaches to dealing with the rising tide of migration into the European Union via the Mediterranean Sea. International law and EU migration law specialists critically assess the legal tools adopted to engage with the ‘refugee crisis’. While the EU works to develop a unified approach to Mediterranean transit and origin countries, the authors argue that a crucial role should be accorded to individual states in finding a solution to this complex and sensitive situation.

In Mediterranean Paradiplomacies: The Dynamics of Diplomatic Reterritorialization, Manuel Duran presents a new view on the phenomenon of paradiplomacy by analyzing the diplomatic activities of a number of Mediterranean substate entities as a site of political territorialization. The international agency of these substate entities is giving way to new patterns of territorialization, as well as alternative forms of diplomacy. Duran examines the diplomatic activities of two Spanish, two French and two Italian regions. The book poses the question of why and how these regions operate diplomatically in a given territorial milieu and convincingly elucidates the particular patterns of reterritorialization that result from these diplomatic activities.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), launched in 2008 amid great controversy within the European Union. Affected from the start by negative fallout from the failure of Middle East peace initiatives, its inadequacies have been underlined by the popular movement for regime change in the Arab world. Leading experts provide here the first integrated analysis of the significance and shortcomings of the UfM. Beginning with critical questioning of the motives and institutional logics informing this venture, the collection proceeds to analyse its key actors, as well as major policy dossiers such as energy and development. The book explains how and why an initiative aiming to depoliticize Euro-Mediterranean relations in fact proved wide open to political discord, bringing huge disruption to UfM activity. While some aspects are found to have merit, the volume is critical of the way in which EU Mediterranean policy became driven by a narrow range of national interests, lost sight of the political objectives of the preceding Barcelona Process and became overwhelmingly bilateral in approach, at the expense of more ambitious region-building efforts. It concludes by highlighting the need to reform the EU Mediterranean policy framework in the light of the Arab uprisings of 2011. This book was published as a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

A comprehensive study of the nexus between democratization and security in the Mediterranean, which are seen as essentially complementary yet threatened by political trends witnessed since the September 2001 attacks. Contributors from a variety of European and Mediterranean countries address the impact of a restructured security system, Europe's effort to establish an autonomous security and defence policy, and attempts among the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs) to build regional security regimes.

Looks at the provisions and potential for the Partnership, which formally established in November 1995 as a series of bilateral free trade agreements between the European Union and individual countries of on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Among the perspectives are who will benefit, the global Euro-Mediterranean partnership, regionalism and the Mediterranean, social feasibility and the costs of the free trade zone, lessons from southeast Asia, and security implications. The 17 articles first appeared in the Journal of North African Studies 3/2 (summer 1998). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The tension between the aim of creating sustainable multilateral region-building dynamics and the need to find more differentiated and flexible forms of cooperation has been ever-present in Euro-Mediterranean relations. The proliferation of different and partially overlapping initiatives in recent years – the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean – is a plain expression of this tension. The 2011 episodes of regime-change in the Arab world have once again placed the debate about differentiation in EU’s relations with Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries at the top of the Union’s foreign policy agenda. This book contributes to theoretical and practical debates on whether differentiation processes can aid or hinder policy convergence processes and region-building efforts more widely. The contributions to this collection assess the actual significance and consequences of differentiation in Euro-Mediterranean relations through sector-specific in-depth analyses, covering issue areas as varied as environmental policy, migration, foreign and defence policy, trade, energy, civil protection and democracy promotion. The particular angle and comprehensive analysis of this book will make it of great interest for both scholars and policy makers alike in a moment when Euro-Mediterranean are in need of a thorough rethink. This book was based on a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

The wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean is in transition. What is being evinced is a situation of continuous volatility, centering on developments such as the ’Arab Spring,’ the Greek sovereign debt crisis, Islamic terrorism, the continuation of deadlock over the Cypriot and Palestinian Issues, significant energy finds in the Levantine Basin, concerns over nuclear proliferation and, more recently, the Syrian Civil War. At a systemic level, the move towards a regional multipolar reality has also contributed to volatility by creating a crescendo of antagonisms between all the major international actors who continuously strive for more influence, power and prestige. This collective project by leading experts represents a unique combination of International Theory and International Politics analysis that deals exclusively with the wider Eastern Mediterranean. It scrutinizes in a multidimensional manner the current geostrategic and geopolitical conditions that include the latest domestic socio-political events, as well as the active involvement of the Great Powers in the region. This book should be of interest to academics, decision-makers and a general reading public focusing on a significant and influential region in flux.