Euro-Mediterranean Economic Cooperation in the Age of Deglobalisation

The pandemic crisis and the war in Ukraine, with its far-reaching geopolitical implications, have shown substantial vulnerabilities in many global supply chains that revamped the debate on the future of globalisation and the potentialities and downsides of reshoring, nearshoring or friendshoring processes. Indeed, the reconfiguration of global value chains has been increasingly debated as an economic policy tool to secure the supply of critical products and establish strategic autonomy at the EU level. The prospective restructuring of the position of Italy and the EU within the international production networks may favour the revitalisation of economic cooperation in the Mediterranean and the achievement of open strategic autonomy through enhanced interdependencies between the EU and its Southern neighbours, diversification of the access to key materials, and integration of partner countries in the area into the industrial supply chains. The main objective of the report is to explore the opportunities and challenges of an improved Euro-Mediterranean economic cooperation at times of geopolitical turbulence and the emergence of deglobalising trends and processes.