In the Near East and North Africa the littoral belt hosts the vast majority of the population, yet the desert extends to the coast of Libya between Tripolitania and Cyrenaique, and between the latter and the Nile delta. But no place in the neighborhood exhibits a greater demographic concentration than the Nile valley, from Luxor to the Mediterranean coast. In neighboring Arab countries, the network is much more limited, both for geo-climatic and economic reasons.
Map 2.6 shows the high density of gas networks in the North Sea, Eastern and Central Europe. The numerous natural gas pipeline projects in the Balkans could make them an interface between Russia and Western Europe. Finally, the Trans-Saharan gas pipeline project connecting Algeria to the gas fields in the Gulf of Guinea shows that "neighbors of neighbors" must be increasingly taken into consideration.
The EU is by far the biggest source of potential growth for itself over the next decade. In contrast, neighborhoods are not seen as strategic economic partners (only 7.5% in EU trade), as well as in many other areas such as scientific cooperation.
The Strong but Declining Importance of Europe for Neighbours
Data for containers and bulk in 2004 and 2011 confirm the drastic decline in Europe's external maritime influence globally, but with a maintained dominance in its immediate regions, those in eastern and southern quarters. The most striking changes take place in the Near East: in the last two decades we have observed a reorientation of flows towards the Middle East, primarily to the disadvantage of Western Europe for Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. There has also been a rapid decline in Western Europe for flights with Israel and Turkey, although this is due to diversification rather than the emergence of a new polarization.
The Prevailing Core-Periphery Pattern
Neighbours ’ Preferential Relations with Speci fi c EU Countries
In the case of air and cooperation streams, this area is grouped together with the former USSR. The former Soviet Union is the only part of the neighborhoods that form a contiguous area, with declining but important interrelationships. Although the Western Balkans maintain important internal relations, they are almost exclusively oriented towards the EU, mainly Central Europe, but also in relative terms towards the Nordic countries.
Note that European and neighboring countries are grouped together if their relations are more intense than expected based on their size. For each pair of countries, we thus calculate their theoretical relations according to their size, compare them with real flows through Chi2, and then group the countries according to the intensity of these relations. Unlike the former USSR, the Maghreb countries have bad internal relations, each country is strongly polarized towards Europe;.
Turkey is strongly, although declining, oriented towards Europe in its external relations, but does not belong to any coherent regional area;. The Near East, including Egypt, is increasingly oriented towards Europe and has seen the influence of the Gulf Powers increase significantly in the last decade.
The Neighbourhoods: Opportunities and Challenges for Europe
Opportunities: Labour Forces, Markets, Investment
People living as foreigners in Western Europe increasingly come from the neighbourhoods, namely the Mediterranean, and from Africa south of the Sahara, which is an extension of the European sphere of influence. Figure 2.2 on world markets shows various meanings of the "European region": EU (plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) plus Western Balkans, plus the Eastern neighbours, plus the Mediterranean neighbours, plus sub-Saharan Africa. In all cases, the contrast of its declining share in the world's GDP is striking against the large rise of the East Asian share.
Before the start of the Arab Spring, the World Bank predicted growth rates in 2011 of 4% in Morocco, Jordan and Algeria, 5% in Tunisia and Syria, 6% in Egypt, 7% in Lebanon; real rates have been much lower and no one knows how long this difficult political transition will last. China, which has become the main trading partner of the countries of the world, to which region they belong. In the 1960s, only a third of the trade of European countries took place between them, and trade links were even lower between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Over the past three decades, the new European member states have drastically reoriented their trade towards Western Europe, rather than the former Soviet bloc. Growing neighborhood markets are an opportunity for Europe to regain its economic influence over them. North Africa attracts less than 1% of the world's FDI inflows, the Arab Middle East (ie the Middle East excluding Israel and Turkey) less than 0.5.
Overall, the Western Balkans and the Eastern Quarter attracted 1.1% of world FDI in the 1990s and 4.3% in the 2000s. As a whole, the emerging East Asian countries attracted 22% of the world's foreign direct investment in 2011 – well ahead of Latin America (10%), not to mention neighboring European countries. In 2014, the figure for emerging East Asian countries reached 34% of the world's foreign direct investment and was below 7% for the European quarters (Map 2.14).
In the late 2000s, emerging countries in the region attracted 21% of Japan's FDI, 10% of US FDI, but only 4% of European FDI – much less in the Mediterranean, despite the fact that many of the country's territories are experiencing rapid growth. Eg. Morocco, Tunisia or even Turkey come mainly from Europe: 85% for Morocco, 57% for Tunisia and 77% for Turkey in the late 2000s. Again, Europe's role as a supplier of FDI for its Mediterranean neighbors is decreasing: from more than 50% in the early 2000s to 30% in 2010 (while the figure is 20% for the Gulf as the origin of FDI in the Mediterranean quarter).
Energy: Threat or Opportunity?
One is the growing share of gas in the energy mix of Europe and its neighbors (lower greenhouse gas emissions than oil). Security of energy supplies is a particular concern in the EU, because most EU member states rely on energy imports from Russia. High dependence on Russian procurement sometimes crosses the line of autonomy, especially in Central Europe such as the Baltic states where 100% of natural gas and almost all oil imports come from Russia.
Although the situation has now somewhat stabilized, the troubled relations of transit countries Ukraine and Belarus with Russia are a serious factor in the instability of energy supplies in the region. In light of these developments, Russia is developing new gas pipelines to the EU bypassing Ukraine and Belarus, which would ensure the stability of energy exports to the EU and avoid dependence on transit countries. The pipeline passes through the waters of five countries in the Baltic Sea region: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia.
Some analysts argue that with new pipelines and seaport projects, Russia is trying to reassert its geopolitical influence in former Soviet countries and Europe in general. The strategy aims to promote a wider use of renewable energy and reduce the consumption of oil and natural gas in the long term. Map 2.19 shows the importance of the eastern neighborhood - read Russia - in the primary energy consumed in Europe.
The Mediterranean neighborhood is in third place (Libya with 10% of crude oil imports and Algeria with 14% of natural gas). Since this is also the case in the Eastern Neighbourhood, map Map 2.19 Energy consumption in the European Union: the key role of the Neighbourhood. The result is given in map 2.23: greenhouse gas emissions are on a large scale in the southern neighbors.
An in-depth cooperation with the neighborhoods in the field of energy will provide Europe with two key advantages: one is the security of acquisitions; two is a general policy in favor of energy transition and the fight against greenhouse gases.
Challenges: Environmental Risks, Water Scarcity, Non-inclusive Growth, Political Unrest
Even though conflict and the economic crisis in the 1990s reduced pollution from agriculture and industry, the rehabilitation of all polluted industrial and mining energy sites remains one of the main issues. This potential needs to be protected, but in 2007 only 6.5 % of the overall Balkan area was placed under protected areas, ranging from 0.8 % of the territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 10.4 % in Albania (EEA2010) . The area appears to be one of the most vulnerable to climate change with significant floods in the northern part (Danube River Basin) and severe droughts in the southern part.
International cooperation is strengthened by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube. The different scenarios in the Envirogrid project do not agree with the impact on agriculture, but they are converging with the increasing scarcity of water (Map 2.24). The numerous earthquakes in the Mediterranean and historic tsunamis prove that the threat remains high.
This requires cooperation between Europe and its neighbors (which has largely begun, eg between Greece and Turkey) in three areas (i) a common warning system, training and exchange of experience in crisis management or insurance issues; (ii) coordinated effective crisis management; (iii) post-crisis reconstruction (Map 2.25). Along with northwest India, the Mediterranean is the region of the world for which climate change scenarios are most seriously converging. The water exploitation index is high in the water basins of the Mediterranean, and not only on the southern side: compared to the available water resources, withdrawals have been historically high in previous decades, especially in the Middle East, Libya and Tunisia, but also in Greece and Spain: the question water is not only a concern of neighbors (map 2.26).
The available water resources are not sustainable in the South, due to their significant dependence on groundwater. As an example, in Tunisia, which is one of the most efficient of the Arab countries in the field of water and sanitation, improvement in potable water (Map 2.27) and sewage (Map 2.28) raises several problems: (i) ecological , since the water sources. The water issue is one of the most important cornerstones for an improved cooperation between Europe and its neighbours.
The issue of inclusive growth is threatened on many levels: locally due to the poor quality of development, access to universal services such as water and people's participation in the management of neighboring territories;. at the national level, because regional disparities are increasing, especially in countries such as Tunisia or Turkey; on the scale of the wider European region, where discontinuities are not sustainable.
