Twenty Years of Euro-Mediterranean Relations

Twenty years have passed since the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) in 1995. Today, North Africa and the Middle East face unprecedented turbulence. This book collects some of the most important articles from the Mediterranean Politics journal in the last twenty years, and suggests how they shed light on the policy and analytical challenges that lie ahead in Euro-Mediterranean relations.

The creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 was seen, at the time, as a forward-thinking foreign policy which would strengthen ties between Europe and the Mediterranean Arab states. Since that time, however, almost none of this initial ambition has been translated into positive, successful policy.

Twenty years on from the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (now the Union for the Mediterranean), this book collects some of the most influential articles published in the Mediterranean Politics journal since 1995 – and suggests what these articles tell us about the state of relations between Europe and the Middle East. The selection of articles gives a sense of the way in which analytical debate has changed in the journal’s lifetime, a lifetime which has seen the journal at the forefront of academic study on a variety of issues in the Mediterranean region. As such, the selection is naturally a reflection of the different periods from which the articles are taken, and, taken together, they paint a picture of how the Euro-Mediterranean partnership has been reshaped over time.