Règles de concurrence et partenariat euro-méditerranéen : échec ou succès ?

« Competition rules and Euro-Mediterranean partnership : Failure or success ? » deals with the Community?s mediterranean policy to the extent that the association and cooperation agreements, which the Community has concluded with most of the non-member coastal States of the Mediterranean, require or imply the introduction and the protection of a system of undistorted competition both within the free trade areas established by these agreements and within the Member States of the agreements. Following a summary description of the purpose and scope of the agreements, a first main section is devoted to explaining the reasons for inserting competition rules into these agreements. It does so by comparison to and distinction from the similar approach used in the European Agreements, which the Community has concluded with those States of Central and Eastern Europe, which are candidates for accession to the Community. The section then gives details of the scope of the competition rules and the mechanisms used to implement and to enforce them, a particular stress being put on the lack of direct applicability of these rules. A fundamental difference between the agreements concluded with the States of the Mediterranean relates to their purpose, since only three States (Cyprus, Malta, Turkey) are actual or likely candidates of adhesion. It is, therefore, with regard to these countries and again by comparison to the candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe, that a specific section deals with the interrelationship between the adhesion process and the introduction of competition rules in the agreements and in the national legal systems of the candidate countries. However, as even almost all non-candidate States have introduced competition rules into their domestic law, the article extensively examines the nature, scope and enforcement mechanisms of such domestic rules on competition. The picture that emerges is one of a relatively homogeneous set of national rules (Israel making a notable exception), which, however, seem to be enforced rather reluctantly and differently in the various countries (the candidate States and, again, Israel being the pro-active exceptions). The article explains the reasons for this not unexpected failure, i.e. the lack of sufficient capacity building and the existence of political resistance, and then opens an entire new section on the issue of convergence between the domestic competition rules of the Mediterranean States, non-members of the Community, and the Community?s competition rules. In particular, the pros and cons of such a conver~gence for both the Community and the partner States are examined in some detail, with particular attention being given to the globalisation context of such conver~gence.