Pronouncements of its Impending Demise were Exaggerated: The EuroMed Partnership Morphing into a Regional Security Super Complex. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 8, No. 12 June 2008

[From the Introduction] While there have been a number of political cooperation initiatives involving this region, the latest being French president Sarkozy’s proposal of a “Mediterranean Union”, in this paper I start with an analysis of some the security-related dynamics within the framework of the EMP (Thornhill 2007a and 2007b)2, often referred to as the Barcelona Process. Studying the Mediterranean as a geo-political region, Pace (2003, 161) states that “the study of regions must in some way include the study of meaning and identity”. Other authors, such as Shamsaddin Megalommatis (2007) are of the opinion that, pertaining to the Arabic and Islamic neighbors of the EU, only Turkey and Iran matter at all. To re-think the Mediterranean region in a relational, political context, Pace (Ibid.) suggests focusing on agency and structure in the analysis of the “processual” aspects of region making