Figure 1.21 Countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea

In July 2013, nine countries on the northern border of the Mediterranean belonged to the European Union (EU), an economic and political union of 28 member states. Four other countries, however, were «on the road to EU membership» – according to the EU web site8 (1). Monaco was the only country on the sea’s northern rim not in the EU nor poised to join it. The remaining eight Mediterranean countries – all on the eastern and southern borders of the sea – are virtually certain to remain outside the EU. Table 1 lists all 22 Mediterranean countries according to their EU status:

Table 1

List of 22 Mediterranean countries and European Union status

If, as the Romans thought, the Mediterranean lies at the middle of this area, the social division is uneven. The European countries in the half above the sea differ greatly from the African countries in the half below – both economically and politically. This difference, obvious to casual political observers, is of great concern to the European Union and to its supporters and allied organizations. A GO-EuroMed consortium of scholars focused on «the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in the context of EU efforts to improve governance throughout its neighbourhood» (14). Their concern appeared in a 2006 report: The European Union’s 2004 enlargement and the aftermath of September 11, 2001 have profoundly altered Europe's strategic position within its neighbourhood. New countries have become neighbors, while the challenges posed by regional instability have raised the stakes for EU foreign policy initiatives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the EU relations with its Mediterranean neighbours (2).

Accordingly, the European Commission formulated a new «European Neighbourhood Policy» (ENP) that «aims to create a «ring of friends» around the EU by actively promoting democratic political and legal reform and economic liberalization in sixteen European and Mediterranean countries» (2). Although the ENP’s sixteen «ring of friends» included the non-Mediterranean nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Jordan, Moldova, Palestinian Territories (Gaza on the Mediterranean but a special case), and Ukraine, they are not included in this study, which is limited to the diverse twenty-two Mediterranean countries. According to a «2008 GO-EuroMed report», «The region remains differentiated in terms of political governance, mainly in terms of differing ideologies and the establishment of autocratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes. Obstacles to building confidence are more political than cultural, as conflicts are aggravated by a lack of trust among Arab leaders rather than the general population in the “Arab street”» (6, p. 38).

Various GO-EuroMed documents stress the importance of «governance» in Mediterranean countries, especially those not in the EU, usually without defining what «governance» means. Russian scholar Mikhail Ilyin finds that it is not a clear and coherent concept, saying that «A host of fuzzy meanings have resulted in an undifferentiated semantical overlap. <…> The term, nowadays, may be seen to encapsulate a variety of modes of coordinating individual action, or basic forms of social order (7, p. 4). For example, a report of the «Institut de la Méditerranée» (Mediterranean Institute) said: «Governance can be defined as coordination between government, local and regional authorities, multilateral organizations but also private actors, companies and NGOs, coordination that results in public policies, decisions and projects» (10, p. 11).