آفاق متوسطية

This report presents the economic and structural database compiled for the MEDPRO project. The database includes governance, infrastructure, finance, environment, energy, agricultural data and development indicators for the 11 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) studied in the MEDPRO project. The report further details the data and the methods used for the construction of social accounting, bilateral trade, consumption and investment matrices for each of the SEMCs.

Micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean suffer from credit constraints. Given their contribution to employment and growth, similarly as in other regions, policy-makers have developed credit guarantee schemes (CGSs) in order to facilitate small companies’ access to debt capital. CGSs are risk-sharing mechanisms under which a guarantor ensures the lender against a share of the possible losses it incurs when extending a loan.

This MEDPRO Policy Paper examines the trends and prospects in financial-sector development and integration in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries and concludes with an agenda for a long-term sustainable transition where finance turns to be a positive stimulus to long-term growth.

Rym Ayadi is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and Coordinator of the MEDPRO project.

The 2011 uprisings in the southern and eastern Mediterranean have put the region at the forefront of current policy developments, calling into question the future of their domestic political systems and the future of the EU partnership with its Southern Neighbourhood. Against this backdrop, this paper analyses and assesses the EU’s development assistance to the region since 1995 and provides insights into the future of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

The demographic and societal structures in southern and eastern Mediterranean countries are expected to undergo profound transformations in the future, calling for new public policies related to employment, human capital and mobility. In addition, the population projections of the MEDPRO project until 2030 have pointed to an increase in working-age populations. Against this background, the authors suggest policies to address challenges in education, inequality, social protection and migration.

This policy paper focuses on the sustainable management of some key natural resources in southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) under climate change and anthropogenic pressures. In a business-as-usual and even more so in a failed cooperation scenario, water resources, ecosystems and biodiversity in the region are under stress, with negative consequences for agriculture, food security, tourism and development. However, proper adaptation strategies are shown to be effective in reconciling resource conservation with GDP, trade and population growth.

Against a background of decades of regulatory reforms aimed at fostering integration, promoting competition, efficiency and productivity growth in the financial industry, both in developed and developing countries, in this MEDPRO Technical Report the authors seek to assess the outcomes of these reform processes on the dynamics of bank efficiency – via the estimation of stochastic meta-frontiers – and convergence for a large sample of countries over the period 1997-2010.

This analysis of regulatory convergence shows that substantial improvements have been made in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs), yet they still suffer from key weaknesses in deposit insurance, entry obstacles, political interference and the strength of legal rights. In particular, deposit insurance systems in many SEMCs are not explicit, which could lead to uncertainties in the provision of support to banks in case of default.

This study aims at assessing the socio-economic and environmental effects of different societal and human development scenarios and climate change in the water-scarce southern and eastern Mediterranean. The study develops a two-stage modelling methodology that includes an econometric analysis for the southern and eastern Mediterranean region as a whole and a detailed, integrated socio-ecological assessment focusing on Jordan, Syria and Morocco. The results show that water resources will be under increasing stress in future years.

This MEDPRO Technical Report explores the relationship between financial sector development and economic growth, using a sample of northern and southern Mediterranean countries for the years 1985-2009. The authors included several variables to measure the development of the financial sector to account both for quantity and quality effects. The results indicate that credit to the private sector and bank deposits are negatively associated with growth, which confirms deficiencies in credit allocation in the region and suggests weak financial regulation and supervision.