EU와 마그레브 공동체간의 협력관계 연구 -지중해연합 출범을 계기로-

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea is vast and its geographical range connects Europe, Africa and Asia. And it’s no doubt that many scholars attach significant importance to it because it has been regarded as a beginning place of history and many civilizations in addition to its political importance. Dividing the world into two parts, the north and the south, the Mediterranean has been the meeting place of the East and the West, Islam and Christianity, Europe and the Arab world, and cultivated flourishing civilizations. The civilizations which developed in the Mediterranean were sometimes winced by U.S. power. However, they seem to be reorganized today into a form of a huge regional organization, the name of which is the Union for the Mediterranean or the Mediterranean Union(MU), by their efforts to recover the glorious days of the past. Indeed, France and Italy among the European counties surrounding the Mediterranean have politically and economically influenced to and also have been affected by North African countries which were once their colonies. And England has kept special relations with Egypt and Israel in varied fields. This article deals with the diversified cooperative relations between EU and the North African countries belong to Arab Maghreb Union(AMU), focusing on MU. There will be variety of gains and losses if an enormous free trade zone establishes following the birth of MU. Indeed, MU is a coupling of two politically, economically, socially and culturally different regions except their geographical proximity and historical connections in which the north exploited the colonial south. The Economist magazine analyzed that the success of MU depend on winning confidence from the north EU countries firstly through displaying how fairly they trade with the North African partners in accordance with the principles of free trade despite two sides’ economic unbalance including opening of the Mediterranean EU countries’ agricultural products market and secondly through decreasing their vested rights among EU countries. Because MU includes two worlds which can be called the developed Christian countries in the north and the developing Islamic countries in the south, it has great diversity. Therefore, it has to seek not the complete unification but the equilibrium, in which they can find peace, harmony and cooperation through communications with largely different each others.