Back to the future: The pact for the Mediterranean and the mirage of Euro-Mediterranean integration

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and southern Mediterranean partners launched the Pact for the Mediterranean in November 2025 to reset relations with the EU's "Southern Neighbourhood" in an increasingly challenging regional context. The Pact comes 30 years after the 1995 Barcelona Process promised to foster economic - and to a lesser degree political - integration in the Mediterranean Basin. The Pact's declared objective is to "achieve deeper integration within the common Mediterranean space" (EC & HR, 2025). This policy brief discusses the Pact's prospects for achieving this goal, which previous efforts have failed to reach. For long-time observers of Euro-Mediterranean relations, the Pact appears to be a "back to the future" approach. Its three substantive "pillars" (people, economies and security) echo the three "baskets" (political/ security, economic and socio-cultural) of the original Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. Structurally, it relies on the same mix of differentiated bilateral agreements (now termed "comprehensive partnerships") within a multilateral regional framework. The Pact's success depends on whether the EU and Mediterranean partner countries can resolve four core dilemmas that have long challenged their relations: The "autocracy dilemma": balancing the need to work with authoritarian governments with European interests in supporting democracy. The "migration dilemma": securing borders while respecting human rights. The "rentierism dilemma": finding solutions to immediate economic, social and environmental challenges while making necessary reforms to rentier political economies. The "regionalism dilemma": cutting bilateral deals while trying to build regional structures to address collective action problems. The term "pact" is normally used to describe an agreement between two partners, setting out agreed objectives and actions for both sides. The Pact for the Mediterranean is an EU policy framework that, at most, represents a tacit agreement with southern Mediterranean governments, without committing either side to policy changes or reforms that might have long-term implications. The Pact for the Mediterranean has potential to strengthen sectoral cooperation, for example on renewable energy, connectivity infrastructure and labour mobility. If accompanied by sufficient resources and mutual trust-building, this functional cooperation may create incentives for deeper integration. This, in turn, will still depend on whether the EU and southern Mediterranean governments can move beyond transactionalism and invest in partnerships between their societies: support for democratic movements and institutions, investment in public goods, protection of the natural environment and investment in collective regionalism. Thus far, there is little indication that the EU and southern Mediterranean governments will take advantage of this opportunity.