The European Commission is expected to present, on 16 October, a proposal for a new Pact for the Mediterranean.
The new Pact will cover a wide range of areas, including energy transition, water scarcity, trade and investment – for instance, in rare earth mining, mobility, digitalisation, and port infrastructure – as well as security, defence, and migration.
The consultation and negotiation process for this proposal, led by the Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, began in January this year and has involved representatives from 24 countries.
In addition to the European Union, the Pact will include Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Tunisia, and Syria.
This initiative coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Euro-Mediterranean Declaration of Barcelona, which brought together the same partner countries but did not succeed in achieving its original goal of establishing a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area (EMFTA).
In a speech delivered at the MEDCat Conference in Barcelona on 9 July, Commissioner Šuica stated that “the Pact aims to bring the vision of the Barcelona Declaration to life.”
Among the main objectives of the new Pact are the simplification and harmonisation of trade and customs procedures, and the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade between the EU and Mediterranean countries.
The Pact also seeks to expand access to investment initiatives such as Global Gateway, an EU project that finances sustainable infrastructure, and to increase support for SMEs and businesses with sustainable practices.
Several Member States have also emphasised the need to revise the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) Convention, signed in 2012. This agreement includes, in addition to Mediterranean partners, the EFTA countries, the Western Balkans, as well as Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia.
The PEM Convention established common rules of origin to facilitate trade and integrate supply chains. Under this regime, importers who can demonstrate that the goods they trade originate in a territory that is party to the Convention may benefit from preferential tariff rates.
The new Pact for the Mediterranean arises from a clear need to strengthen cooperation between the EU and its Mediterranean neighbours — a need that has become even more pressing in the context of regional political instability, migratory and humanitarian crises, and the increasing alignment of North African and Middle Eastern countries with Russia and China, to the detriment of European partners — as illustrated by Egypt’s accession to the BRICS bloc in 2024.
The ambitious vision of shared peace and prosperity that defined the 1995 Barcelona Declaration is expected to remain at the heart of the new Pact, though tempered by pragmatism and a focus on concrete, actionable measures aimed at establishing a stable framework for cooperation.
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