N° 3 > EUROMED appraisal: overview of EU funding for Mediterranean development
This report addresses the following question: since 1995, has the European Union supplied adequate funding to the Euro-Mediterranean partnership?
It highlights key figures and questions that players in South and East Mediterranean Countries (SEMCs) can use to take a stance, and in particular those from the economic sphere, in line with Ipemed’s mission to serve as a tool for inter-business cooperation in the Mediterranean.
The report’s ambit goes beyond a simple analysis of the amounts of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI). If we only focus on the plethoric range of instruments and projects that the European Union has aimed at its neighbours, it is easy to forget that international public aid is very different from what it was in the 1990s, and that European aid is in any case limited in relation to other external financial resources or in comparison with the levels of SEMCs’ trade deficits over the last dozen years. We can in particular lose sight of the fact that other regions in the world are developing differently without this type of financial aid.
The author
Pierre Beckouche is a geography professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and director of the scientific interest group “International College of Territorial Sciences”. He is also Ipemed’s scientific advisor.
Contents
- The European Union is the main source of (civil) aid for the Mediterranean
- European aid for the eastern Neighbourhood is catching up with aid earmarked for SEMCs
- • There is little coherence between EU public aid and that of the Member States
- The Mediterranean’s share of PDA is shrinking radically, but is that a bad thing?
- Summary of EU funding for third countries: southern neighbourhood shrinking
- The sectorial content of aid: dispersed, low-level aid for the production sector
- Actual results are very moderate
- So are the results portrayed
- Confirm the target of “deep-seated” regional integration, focus resources on a few chosen strategic policies and the production system
