Building the Mosaic of Mediterranean Integration

Drawing on his personal experience as Malta's foreign minister from 2004 to 2008, the author argues that the process of Mediterranean integration should be viewed as building a mosaic block by block, with each tile being important to the whole. The original idea for a Union the Mediterranean is depicted as being superior to its successor, the Union the Mediterranean The aim should have been to establish a council of the Mediterranean along the lines of the Council of the Baltic States. The political architecture of the Mediterranean is composed of a variable geometry and concentric circles, in which the Olive Group is a "soft" landing place for informal dialogue among the group members and other non-EU states on the Mediterranean littoral. Michael Frendo was Malta's minister of foreign affairs from 2004 to 2008 and is a visiting professor at Link Campus, University of Malta in Rome. He has been a member of parliament for the past twenty-three years and is currently also chairman of the Foreign and European Affairs Committee of the Maltese Parliament and an international consultant specializing in the countries of the Euro-Med area and of the Commonwealth.