A more integrated West-Mediterranean as a possible implication of a weaker EU: as a possible implication of a weaker EU

Abstract

The growing anti-EU sentiments in Southern Europe, juxtaposed with the increasing importance of North Africa in the foreign policies of Spain and Italy under the influence of the immigration and energy crises, attested to by Giorgia Meloni’s Mattei Plan and the Morocco-Spain summit raises the prospects of more integration between the two banks of the West-Mediterranean. But the countries constituting each bank are politically and economically bound by agreements and treaties to other regional blocks and transnational organizations besides their cultural, ideological, and structural incoherence. In this paper, I dwell on the outlook of a more integrated West Mediterranean region, within the context of a weaker EU which is more and more invested in the Mediterranean Sea, and the implications of this integration for the other regional commitments of some West-Mediterranean states. In this endeavour, I draw on an interdisciplinary approach that maps into Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Critical Layered Analysis (CLA), and political theory.