Euro-Mediterranean Commercial Integration: Unequal Distribution among the Countries

Regional integration has a major role to play in expanding trading capacities and facilitating competition and innovation. With the elimination of market access barriers, the driving force is the increase in trade within regions rather than across them. The concern, in particular in relation to the European region (or bloc), is asymmetry in comparative advantages and disparity in the economic and social size of the two regions and within each region. With the enlargement of the EU in 2004, the logic and scope of the original institutional framework became unsustainable. The original design has shifted since 2004 to a more ‘shallow’ integration, due to the complexity of the problems confronting the EU and its partners and the new conflicts within the region that have hampered political and administrative reforms.