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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/03
The EU Common Mediterranean Strategy: Impact on the Barcelona Process
January 2000
Abstract
The Common Mediterranean Strategy (CMS) establishes the principles, objectives and instruments of the European Union's (EU) Mediterranean policy. That policy largely regards the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), set up in 1995 with the task of implementing the Barcelona Declaration.
The crisis in Israeli-Palestinian relations triggered by the failure of the July 2000 Camp David Summit has brought the Barcelona process to a stop as well. It must be pointed out, however, that there were already few remaining expectations for the Barcelona process. The ongoing uprising in Palestine has only dramatised a framework that was already almost stalled. Many basic disagreements and much mistrust have in fact emerged among the EMP Partners with respect to issues as important as human rights, terrorism and globalisation, to quote just a few. Most decisive has proven to be the profound asymmetry between respective security agendas: stability in the Mediterranean, on the EU side, and peace in the Middle East, on the other side. Over time, it has emerged very clearly that no kind of plurilateral Mediterranean co-operation can be achieved unless the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) first reaches an acceptable solution. Despite efforts from EU official quarters to affirm the contrary, there is no doubt that the Barcelona process is hostage to the MEPP, for the simple reason that the Arab governments cannot give Israel any peace dividend in the EMP framework before peace is fully established in the Middle East.
The CMS was set out five years after the inception of the Barcelona process. It is similar, both in wording and contents, to the Barcelona Declaration. Given the difficulties and obstacles encountered by the Barcelona process so far, what value can the CMS now add to it?
