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After a long gestation period, after a series of partly bilateral and partly multilateral agreements between the European Community and the Mediterranean countries, in particular the ones grouped in Mashrek and Magreb, in November 1995 the European Union undersigns an important partnership agreement (with a fifteen years perspective) with the whole of the Mediterranean countries, that is all the Countries from Morocco up to Lebanon. The idea is that within 2010 the Mediterranean area must not only be "Our Sea", but must become a big market within which there can be a freer circulation of people, goods, services and capital and above all a free circulation of culture, democracy and dialogue between different civilisations. This agreement is undersigned in Barcelona, the well known big Catalan town, at the end of November 1995 and it represents one of the important stages for the development of the relationships between the European Union and the third Countries. We remind you that one of the first actions of the European Community was the signing of the Lomè Treaty with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, that is a big part of the former colonies. This agreement with the Mediterranean area enriches and completes the relationships both between the European Union and these Countries and the relationships that the European Union is going to establish with the other parts of the world, such as Asian, in Asia, or the co-operation for the opening of a dialogue with the Latin American countries grouped in the Mercosur. The other important thing of the euro-Mediterranean partnership is that some countries, such as Italy, Greece, France or Spain, believe it important to compensate the efforts that the European Union had made to open a dialogue and the negotiations for the accession of the central and eastern Europe countries, The same efforts had to be made also for the Mediterranean countries. Such efforts should be not only political, but also financial. The euro-Mediterranean dialogue reflects this thought and it has a very open-minded perspective, because all the events that will happen in the future years- conflicts, tensions and also of the Muslim terrorism- asks for a deeper dialogue between different civilizations and obviously for a consolidation of the partnership. In fact, it represents an important tool that allows the circulation of ideas and consequently of mutual respect. It is evident that this partnership has some consequences, also from a commercial point of view, since it allows the break down of the frontiers and a remarkable decrease of duties. As a consequence, there is a free exchange of products and thanks to the development of trade we can have a bigger development of economics. From this point of view, the European Union proves to be an important partner at international level, an essential interlocutor in the context of a more and more globalised world that is going to become a multipolar entity. The free circulation of people between the two different parts of the Mediterranean and especially from the southern Mediterranean towards the northern Mediterranean area raises the problem of the circulation of people within the European Union. So it is important to remember that after many years of negotiations, the Schengen agreement is finally enforced. This is an agreement that puts together some of the countries, even if not all, that are part of the European Union, and it allows the complete break down of physical frontiers, which means the free circulation of people, within Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Holland, Spain and Austria. Italy, that must come into line with some of these Schengen norms, will access only a couple of years later, in 1997. But the Schengen agreement too, together with some other facts, represents a fundamental stage for the construction of an integrated Europe and for the creation of that wide area without frontiers conceived by Delors in 1985.
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