A quarter-century of studying Euro-Mediterranean relations: A systematic literature review

The year 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the Barcelona Process, an initiative which is celebrated as the beginning of a quarter of a century of dialogue and cooperation between the EU and its South Mediterranean partners. This article offers the first systematic analysis of the scholarly debate about the EU’s action in the Southern Mediterranean by using bibliometric data of studies from 1995 until 2020 from the Scopus database. The analysis reveals the following findings: first, regardless of the presence of several research networks, studies about Euro-Mediterranean relations remain mainly an individual enterprise. Second, after the Barcelona Process, the literature was marked by a creative synthesis between area studies and EU-wide trends leading to distinctive typologies of Euro-Mediterranean relations. Third, although there is a consensus among scholars about the EU’s Eurocentric approach towards Euro-Mediterranean relations, a social network analysis of the literature shows that scientific cooperation remains extremely Eurocentric. Fourth, despite the important contribution of women in this field, the discipline suffers from a significant gender gap.