Israel and the Barcelona Process: The First Five Years

Abstract

The purpose of this contribution is to analyze Israel’s evolving thinking in relation to the Euro-Mediterranean initiative launched in 1994 by the European Commission, leading later to the Barcelona Conference of November 1995, where 27 EU and Mediterranean Non-EU Member Countries (MNMCs) adopted a Declaration of the same name, which became the basis of what is commonly called the Barcelona Process, much inspired by its successful predecessor, the so-called Helsinki Process.

This report is an extended version of a short working paper prepared for Euromesco, the network of institutes of strategic studies created in the context of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (see EuroMeSCo Papers, No.3, October 1998). I wish to thank Euromesco for supporting my research and to Yaffa Ben Ari of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, to Eya1 Inbar of the Hebrew University, and to Joel Peters of Ben Gurion University for their comments on an earlier draft of this report.