Mediterranean Economies

In recent years, international economic relations and political conditions in the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean have been undergoing a phase of profound transformation. In this context of change, the objectives and instruments of the European Union’s Mediterranean policy require reconsideration, with the aim of identifying elements that may strengthen its effectiveness and guide its future directions. Relaunching strategies of cooperation between the two shores of the basin presupposes, in fact, a thorough understanding of the structural characteristics and of the political and economic dynamics that shape the economies of the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

The Report aims to respond to a growing demand for knowledge coming both from economic and institutional actors — particularly policy makers — and from the academic world, where the Mediterranean is increasingly used as an emblematic case study of the relations between the Global North and the Global South, including within university and postgraduate educational programmes.

The Mediterranean represents a highly interconnected space, as clearly demonstrated by data on trade flows and logistics networks. At the same time, it remains a deeply heterogeneous area, where countries characterised by significant economic inequalities, different levels of human development, ongoing and still incomplete processes of democratisation, and latent or unresolved conflicts coexist, all of which contribute to a persistent state of political instability.

Cosidering these transformations, while maintaining its role as a permanent observatory on the economies of the Mediterranean, the Report has progressively expanded its analytical scope to include political and institutional issues, which are essential tools for interpreting an international landscape in which geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics increasingly shape the trajectories of global economic development.

Reflection on the future of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation — and on the need to rethink the related policies — has also emerged strongly in recent EU programmes such as Horizon 2020. This reflection stems from the awareness that global economic instability requires responses at the regional level, in light of the evident repercussions of international crises on national markets and the need to build new development pathways based on strengthened intergovernmental cooperation.

In this context, the Mediterranean Economies represents an original publication within the landscape of Italian research. Many similar editorial products tend to favour either an exclusively political approach — focused on the analysis of Euro-Mediterranean relations and the formulation of foreign policy strategies for managing crises, conflicts and migration flows — or a strictly economic approach, primarily aimed at supporting firms interested in investing in the countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

The ISMed Report is positioned at the intersection of these two disciplinary approaches, presenting itself as a tool for research and reflection capable of integrating economic analysis with political interpretation. The volume therefore does not merely update the state of knowledge in the various economic fields considered; it also offers interpretative frameworks, presenting data and information and providing a reading capable of identifying the main trends currently shaping the Mediterranean space.

This periodical series represents an observatory on the dynamics of socio-economic cooperation within the Euro-Mediterranean space, analysed across their main dimensions — population, trade, foreign investment, environment and geopolitics — with particular attention to Euro-Mediterranean relations and to the interdependencies that develop between the different shores of the basin.

The Report also aims to serve as a tool for reflection to help revitalise Italy’s role in the Mediterranean, contributing to the debate on the strategies needed to strengthen the country’s economic and commercial presence in the region. In recent years, the northern shore of the basin has progressively lost ground to other European powers outside the Mediterranean, such as Germany, while the logistical centrality of Italy has weakened, with several national ports increasingly exposed to competition from other Mediterranean and European hubs.

At the same time, Europe is called upon to confront complex phenomena that directly affect the Mediterranean area: from migratory pressures to the persistence of unresolved conflicts on the south-eastern shore of the basin — such as the Arab–Israeli conflict and inter-ethnic tensions in Lebanon — to more recent crisis scenarios, including the Russo–Ukrainian war, the crisis in the Gaza Strip, and the long-term consequences of the civil wars in Libya and Syria, which continue to generate political instability and population movements in search of international protection.

In the face of these challenges, the need to move beyond a vision of the Mediterranean centred exclusively on the European perspective has become increasingly evident. Only through a cross-cutting view of Mediterranean societies, analysed in their mutual interdependence, is it possible to identify shared strategies capable of enhancing political convergence and economic complementarities.

The Mediterranean Economies fits within this framework by proposing, each year, a thematic focus devoted to one of the major socio-economic issues affecting the region. The importance of these dynamics has recently been emphasised by European institutions as well: the European Parliament has recommended that the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs strengthen the Union’s Mediterranean strategy. In response to these recommendations, a Joint Communication was adopted, accompanied by the related Economic and Investment Plan for the Southern Neighbourhood, which proposes a new and ambitious Agenda for the Mediterranean, supported by a financial package of around €7 billion.

This strategic framework constituted the central theme of the 2024 edition of Mediterranean Economies, published twenty years after the launch of the Report.