Introduction

For the first time ever, the European Commission, the Presidency of the Council and the Secretary General/High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) have designed a comprehensive framework towards the Mediterranean and the Middle East, two regions that previously had been artificially disconnected in the EU's external relations strategies.

Since the freeze of the Euro-Arab Dialogue in the mid-1980s, the relations of the Member States with the Arab world were not based on a single framework. Seven so-called ‘Arab Mediterranean countries’ (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia) benefited from the Global Mediterranean Policy. Mauritania, Somalia, and Sudan were considered as belonging to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and therefore included under the Lomé Convention's framework. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates benefited, for their part, from a specific contractual relationship established between the EC and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This approach was considered, by the members of the Arab League, as leading to a ‘balkanisation’ of the Arab world. The launching of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) at the Barcelona Conference in November 1995 was innovative in that it welcomed the new Palestinian Authority among the southern Mediterranean partners. Nevertheless, the Arab League continued to criticise the EU for not developing a comprehensive Euro-Arab strategy.

Therefore, when the Member States decided, in 2003, to launch a new initiative towards the Middle East, this ‘Euro-Arab’ issue was discussed at EU level.