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Anniversaries can be moments for some really honest reflection and accounting. As the EU prepares its new “Pact for the Mediterranean,” marking 30 years since the launch of the Barcelona Process, the balance sheet reveals a partnership operating at a significant deficit. The most telling figure is the estimated $108.6 billion in potential trade between the EU and countries in the southern Mediterranean that remains unrealized. It is a disappointing statistic that perfectly sums up decades of ambition consistently outpaced by constantly evolving geopolitical realities.

Countries in North Africa, meanwhile, empowered by alternatives offered by Russia and China and guided by a new “sovereignty-first” doctrine, now increasingly view relations with Europe through a transactional lens. The new EU pact, in turn, scheduled to be implemented in late 2025 and born from a newly created directorate-general for the Mediterranean region, aims to reset this relationship through the promise of co-ownership and regional initiatives.

However, even if the pact is a sophisticated, carefully calibrated framework backed by significant buy-in, it is still built on a very unstable foundation and strained by mutual societal antipathy, the EU’s own defensive geopolitics, and a fundamental disconnect from the shifting dynamics of North Africa.

After all, the context has shifted markedly since 1995, when the Barcelona Process was launched with the aim of fostering peace, stability, prosperity, and dialogue between the EU and its Mediterranean neighbors. The southern Mediterranean is no longer a region that looks primarily to Europe for partners. North African countries, armed with a heightened sense of agency and a wealth of alternatives, are capitalizing on their role as gatekeepers of energy supplies and migration routes to recalibrate their relationships with Brussels. Naturally, this has fundamentally altered the power dynamic in which the EU once held significant influence but now finds itself needing these governments more than they need it.

It is a shift in dependency accurately reflected in several developments, from the suspension by Morocco of judicial cooperation with the EU in 2015, to the humiliating ejection in July this year of an EU delegation from eastern Libya, and the ceaseless mudslinging between Algiers and Paris. So far the EU’s response, which was to split its neighborhood policy and create the dedicated Directorate-General for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, has reflected an institutional acknowledgment of these new realities. However, it also formalizes a separation, treating the EU’s southern neighbors more like subjects of classic geopolitics than potential participants in a shared project of converging governance.

Nonetheless, Brussels deserves credit for its institutional response to a hotly contested geopolitical arena right on its doorstep. Financially, the new pact marks a radical departure in approach. It will arrive without a dedicated financial envelope, which is a significant change from past initiatives. Its regional investment pillar depends overwhelmingly on the mobilization of private capital, with the aspiration of replicating the ambition of the 2021 New Agenda to catalyze €30 billion ($35 billion) in private investment.

The unresolved and pressing question, however, is how this model will succeed and attain what previous efforts failed to achieve. Given the profound needs of the region and the persistent perception of risk among investors, this market-centric strategy appears decidedly optimistic. Without a transparent assessment of the reasons for the failure to meet prior private capital targets, and a credible mechanism for derisking major projects, there is a risk the economic foundation of the new pact will be fundamentally flawed.

Furthermore, the extensive EU consultation process for the pact, while commendable in its ambitions for inclusivity, has created a significant expectation-management problem. By soliciting a wide range of views from governments, think tanks, and civil society groups, the EU has effectively raised the bar for its own new policy, gathering inputs that frequently diverge and at times are mutually exclusive. The credibility of the entire endeavor now depends on an ability to weave these conflicting priorities into a coherent text, which is a formidable diplomatic task.

In a region where North African states have mastered the art of tactical diplomacy, there is a risk that the initiative could become a technically sound answer to the wrong set of questions.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

The challenge is further magnified by a glaring inconsistency in the EU’s approach: The participatory regional ethos of the pact directly contradicts the closed-door, state-centric negotiations that produce controversial bilateral deals, such as the migration-focused memorandum of understanding with Tunisia that attracted criticism from member states and the European Parliament alike. In a way, the habit of talking about a “partnership” while still pursuing old-school, interest-driven deals represents yet another threat to the promise of the pact before it is even implemented.

Perhaps the most frustrating challenge is the profound societal divergence that now defines the Mediterranean; the vision of a shared community feels like a relic. An unhelpful symmetry has emerged, too. As Europe grapples with its own populist currents, North Africa is witnessing a parallel rise in assertive nationalism. In fact, across the Arab world, a potent decolonization discourse is fueling a wholesale rejection of European influence, a sentiment so powerful that some civil society organizations are even refusing EU funds in protest over the bloc’s position on Gaza.

The uncomfortable message echoing from dialogue forums is essentially: “We want your money but please keep out,” in a rapture that extends all the way from presidential palaces to public squares. So while the pact’s planned people-to-people initiatives are well-intentioned, the canyon of mutual distrust is too wide and too deep to be easily bridged.

So how can the EU “right-size” its approach?

The path forward is not to completely scrap the pact but to temper its ambitions with a dose of cold, hard reality. Firstly, Brussels must conduct a clear-eyed audit of its 2021 New Agenda for the Mediterranean, publicly assessing which initiatives actually attracted private investment and which fell flat. Transparency of this kind is the only currency that can buy credibility.

Secondly, it should fully embrace its own rhetoric about “coalitions of the willing” by pursuing smaller, tangible projects with demonstrably achievable outcomes, rather than chasing the phantom of region-wide consensus. This kind of pragmatic incrementalism mirrors the transactional playbook North African governments already use to great effect.

Finally, and most critically, it must thread the needle in striking a balance between interest-driven bilateral accords and its wider vision for the region, ensuring that short-term deals on migration or energy do not permanently hollow out its claims to support human rights and a broader partnership, thereby eroding the very trust it needs to build for long-term stability.

The New Pact for the Mediterranean is not without its merits; its two-level structure and focus on tangible projects, such as a Mediterranean University Network, reflect a welcome shift toward pragmatism. However, in a region where North African states have mastered the art of tactical diplomacy, there is a risk that the initiative could become a technically sound answer to the wrong set of questions.

The priorities in Brussels must shift from projecting a model of governance to proving that Europe remains a relevant partner for a neighborhood that has energetically cultivated other options. Otherwise, without a more honest reckoning, the pact risks becoming the final, elegant codification of a strategic decoupling.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. X: @HafedAlGhwell