RETHINKING THE EURO MED POLICY: A COOPERATIVE APPROACH IN AN INCREASINGLY TRANSFORMING REGION LOTFI SOUR * Abstract. The EU has played a pivotal role in the Mediterranean region so it has developed different approaches to regional integration. The EU sought to develop institutional integration through the Euro- Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP),andthesubsequentUnionfortheMediterranean(UFM),however the Arab Spring has led to a critical assessment of these practices. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a region encompassing approximately22countriesintheMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.Theterm MENA covers an extensive region, extending from Morocco to Iran, includingallMiddleEasternMashriqandMaghrebcountries.Thetermis roughly synonymous with the term the Greater Middle East. Nevertheless the MENA region has experienced internal uprisings, the breakdown of states, the growing presence of Islamism on the political scene, civil war, massive movements of population and an ongoing geopolitical power struggle. Faced with growing fragmentation the challenges that are emerging from a “changing neighborhood” in the region, the EU have opened a new policy window for the EU and called for a policy reassessmentregardingtheSouthernsideoftheMediterraneantorespond to the new domestic, regional and global challenges MENA is facing today.Inthetext,MEDreferstotheeightArabcountriesthatwerepartof the Barcelona process and includes Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia. Hence, the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity and the “more for more” logic tried to accomplish this by contributing to the definition of a new framework in EU-Mediterranean relations that could go beyond the inconsistencies of the past. Overall, the Mediterranean policy, whether EMP, ENP, or new ENP, pursues both the declared interests of the EU as a whole or its individual member states and norms andvalueswhichcannotsimplybereducedtosuchinterests. Keywords: ArabSpring,EuropeanUnion,Mediterranean,Neighborhood Policy,securityinterests. Pol.Sc.Int.Rel., XIV, 1, pp. 122–135, Bucharest, 2017. ———————— * Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, University of Mascara; Associate Member at the Research and Political Studies Centre, University ofAlgiers III, lotfitlem87@yahoo.fr.