Meanwhile the lands on the northern flank of the Mediterranean saw their destiny as a European one, turning their backs on the sea to participate in a European Union whose strongest economies lie away from the Mediterranean. Weaknesses in the economy of every single EU territory within the Mediterranean (with the minute exception of Gibraltar, which still experiences roughly 5 per cent growth) have only increased the sense of a fractured Mediterranean; if there is a tiger economy in the Mediterranean it is clearly Turkey, a state that is still trying to decide on its role in the wider region. Its impressive rates of economic growth provide a stark and startling contrast to the situation in Greece, and (a recent article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed out) a better performance than Romania or Bulgaria, as well as a comparable performance to the Baltic States. Even so, it is important to emphasise that trade not with the Mediterranean but with Germany is an important ingredient of Turkish economic success. The other successful economy in the Mediterranean is Israel, which has a particularly impressive record for the creation of start-up hi-tech companies. However, its integration into the wider economic networks of the eastern Mediterranean is seriously hampered by its political isolation, and has been accentuated by the severe decline in its relations with Turkey.  

The big question is how the relationship between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean can be reconstituted. It is interesting to observe how much investment, not just from France but from China and Arab countries, was being pumped into Tunisia on the eve of the Arab Spring, making it quite probably the strongest economy in the African continent; but such successes may now seem precarious. By building a massive new port at Tanger-Med, the government of Morocco is seeking to draw benefit from traffic through the Straits of Gibraltar and openly to challenge Algeciras across the water. Morocco actually asked to join the EU in 1987, and, despite the expected rejection, a number of agreements tie the EU to Morocco. But increasing wealth among the Moroccan middle classes still has to be matched by a massive improvement in the condition of the urban and rural majority. Probably, though, the country to watch is Libya, where the elections have apparently shown that there is strong support for a liberal, non-Islamist government, and where prodigious energy resources promise to bring the country the sort of prosperity enjoyed by the Gulf states.

Attempts have been made to bind together the countries of the Mediterranean in a diffuse league of states that would be able to address common problems, irrespective of political differences. The first major initiative was the so-called Barcelona process of 1995, in which both the Mediterranean countries and the members of the EU were involved; but plans for the creation of a free trade area in the Mediterranean by 2010 have remained simply plans. 

The idea of a "Mediterranean Union" is more of an ideal than a practical possibility, even though there are urgent questions that need to be addressed together by all Mediterranean nations, notably the issue of migration and the promotion of trade between the EU and non-EU countries within the Mediterranean, not to mention the sharp political confrontations that exist in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Particularly important is the protection of the maritime environment, which has experienced massive and catastrophic change as a result of over-fishing (treating the sea as an unlimited food source), and the dumping of effluents (treating the sea as a vast rubbish tip). One of the world's seas that is worst affected is the Mediterranean, as a mainly closed space, though the situation in another almost enclosed sea, the Baltic, is even worse, to the extent that much of the Baltic can be described as dead water.  Lack of oxygen in the water is only one consequence of the human presence.  The vast quantities of plastic, often in the form of minute globules, that choke the sea and the animals that live within it are a further major problem, and once again the Mediterranean is a particular area of concern.