The Evolution of the EEC-EU Economic Policies towards the Mediterranean

The Evolution of the EEC/EU Economic Policies towards the Mediterranean Gian Cesare Romagnoli- Università Roma Tre The Evolution of the EEC/EU Institutions and Policies Siena 23-24 maggio 2008 Abstract JEL: International Economic Policy The Mediteranean basin hosts countries with very different economic situations. The Northern side is represented by a world economic power, the European Union (EU), while the Southern one by a variegated group of Third Mediterranean Countries (TMC) most of which share the economic conditions of less developed countries (ldc). The EU has often declared its interest to stabilise and strengthen TMC from the point of view of regional integration and economic development, none the less the economic results of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership are shaky and poor even if one looks at the last decennium after the Barcelona Declaration. It can be argued that the premises of these results are rooted in the past trade history of this area. Therefore a brief historical reconstruction introduces this paper. The contents of these premises have to do firstly with the division of the Mediterranean civilizations and communications routes and secondly with a different attitude towards modernization and its implementation in the two different sides of the Mediterranean. From these diversities two different development paths have followed associated with different trade theories, trade models, international division of labour, productive specialization which are at the base of the different economic contexts still prevailing in the two areas where the complementarity and the competitiveness relationships with respective partner countries play a significant role for trade volumes, structures and directions. The transition of TMC, as many other ldc from the import substitution to the export led development model has delayed their option for the intraindustrial trade model. The aim of this paper is to argue that it is possible to trace out a common design either in the two different phases of the European Economic Community economic policy towards the TMC or in the Euro-Mediterranean policies which have followed them. The targets of the Barcelona Process, through the Euro- Mediterranean Partnership, financed by the Meda Program, have been mainly disattended and substituted by bilateral commercial agreements which have left the TMC with the old problem of a poor South-South trade and the more recent one of declining Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). In short the European policy for the Mediterranean has not changed much either with EEC or UE and therefore the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area planned by the Barcelona Declaration to start within 2010 is now close but the premises for it to become convenient also for the Southern side of the Mediterranean are still missing.