The Mediterranean Neighbourhood

PanebiancoFramed within the governance approach, an alternative academic approach to classical integration theory, this chapter explores the main facets of European Union (EU) governance in EU relations with Mediterranean neighbour countries (MNCs). Since 1995, various legal, policy, and institutional frameworks have been created to frame Euro-Mediterranean relations. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), just to mention the most relevant regional platforms, have provided overlapping policy frameworks in the EU’s governance of the Mediterranean. Thirty years later, new cooperation platforms and issues such as the management of irregular migration have attracted political attention and have become the object of a plethora of governance tools in the Mediterranean Neighbourhood. However, we can hardly assess policy convergence between the EU and MNCs. Assuming ‘governance’ is the action of multiple actors engaged in a variety of forms of governance, encompassing the public provision of collective goods in diverse arenas, both within and among national governments (Marks and Hooghe 1996; Börzel and Risse 2010; Lavenex 2016; Hooghe and Marks 2020), this contribution seeks to assess where the Mediterranean Neighbourhood currently stands.