Whether the countries of the Mediterranean littoral are linked by special bonds of solidarity is and will remain a much-debated question⁽¹⁾. After the Second World War, anti-imperialist and non-aligned thinking advocated such solidarity on the grounds that countries as diverse as Egypt and Italy, or Spain and Algeria, were none the less equally subject to political and economic domination by the more advanced countries of Northern Europe and North America.

This hypothesis, though not without its effect on the political positions of Mediterranean governments, has proved to be unfounded. The countries of Southern Europe have become increasingly integrated into the...

One of the most significant trends in the 1980s was the increase and spread of conventional weapons, on the one hand, and the proliferation of systems of ‘unconventional’ weapons on the other. The latter - nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons and ballistic missiles - are the result of relatively recent tendencies towards a qualitative improvement in the military arsenals in the Southern Regions, whereas the quantitative accumulation of conventional weapons is a longstanding trend.

Within this general development, which affects the whole of the Third World, the amount of weapons accumulated in the Southern Regions and the growing importance...

The examination of the main trends at work in the Southern Regions, made in the previous section, leads to the conclusion that in these regions there is a situation of chronic instability. Broadly speaking, it is evident that this instability cannot but have an impact on European security. However, one has to determine more precisely what are the characteristics of the European security problem across the Mediterranean frontier. In other words, what is the rationale for European security policies in this area? This will allow the identification of policies that are to be pursued by the Europeans in the Mediterranean...