Tunis: The Mediterranean Pact, launched in Barcelona on 28 November 2025, is turning into a network of bilateral deals rather than the regional project its name suggests. A year on, the European Union’s own Action Plan for spring 2026 describes an operational monitoring tool, not a formal adoption document, and that choice says a great deal about how Brussels now wants to work with its southern neighbours.
The initiative rests on three pillars covering people, economies and security, and it names ten partner countries: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia. The political backbone of the Mediterranean Pact was set by a Joint Communication of 16 October 2025, Council conclusions of 20 November 2025 and European Council conclusions of 18 December 2025. Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, who is responsible for the Mediterranean file, carries the effort inside the Commission.
The centre of gravity is the comprehensive partnership. Egypt and Tunisia have signed, while Morocco, Algeria and Jordan are still negotiating, according to a 2026 policy brief from the German Institute of Development and Sustainability. Each partnership trades investment and market access for cooperation on issues such as migration, which makes the Mediterranean Pact attractive to capitals but harder to describe as a shared regional framework.
The money behind the Action Plan is real but modest next to the ambition. The Startup4Med initiative carries roughly €470 million in guarantee capacity, a regional jobs initiative under Team Europe is worth about €3 billion, and the Mediterranean University is funded with €11 million for 2025 and 2026, alongside €15.2 million of Erasmus+ money in 2026. The clean energy initiative known as T-MED is meant to mobilise far more private capital through guarantees. The Action Plan for the Mediterranean Pact also admits that some lines, including a culture initiative and a Startup4Med contract, still awaited decisions in the third quarter of 2026.
Critics focus on what is missing. The policy brief notes that the word democratic appears only once in the Joint Communication, and it describes the bilateral focus as the end of region-building while the Union for the Mediterranean remains under-funded. The European Ombudsman has opened an inquiry into the Tunisia partnership, which keeps the migration bargain under scrutiny. Some Algerian respondents in the consultation called the approach top-down.
The open question for the Mediterranean Pact is what co-ownership means in practice. Governments tend to read it as respect for sovereignty and fewer conditions, whereas civil society reads it as a seat at the table. The Action Plan also leaves participation by the Gulf states as something still to be explored, which keeps a potential source of capital at arm’s length.
For 2027 the test is delivery. If the youth guarantee pilots planned for Morocco and Tunisia in the fourth quarter of 2026 reach young people, and if the remaining partnerships close, the Mediterranean Pact will have shown that a deal-by-deal method can still produce a shared agenda. If not, it risks remaining a communication exercise layered on top of older migration and energy bargains.
