The Euro-Mediterranean partnership

At the Barcelona Conference in November 1995, the European Union and 12 southern and eastern Mediterranean states established the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP). Seen by the EU as a response to instability along its southern flank and by the other partners as a means of strengthening their economies, through anchoring them to Europe, the initiative is one of the most ambitious external projects ever undertaken by the European Union. Central to it are plans to create a free trade area including 30 countries and 800 million people by early in the twenty-first century. In the eyes of its architects, the EMP promises to counter the acute political, economic and social problems affecting the EU's Mediterranean neighbours. These problems increasingly affect European countries as recipients of migrants and as refuges (and sometimes targets) for radical Islamist groups. While the European Union places its faith in free market responses to the economic challenges, it is encouraging security cooperation as a further means of fostering Mediterranean stability. The EMP is important at three levels: as an attempt to bring stability to an area renowned for conflict; as a conscious exercise