Europe and the Arab World focuses on an initiative, originally launched by the European Union in Barcelona, to put its relations with Arab countries of the Mediterranean (and Gulf) regions on a new footing of equality and mutually beneficial cooperation. The volume provides a detailed empirical account of the initiative as well as an historically contextualized, intellectually critical and politically perceptive analysis of the various realities impacting on this initiative. The authors conclude that, while considerable dialogue and even institution-building have taken place in order to give substance to this attempt to go beyond the colonial legacy of inequality and dependence, little of a concrete kind has been achieved in transforming the underlying economic and political relationships between the Arab Islamic and European Christian littorals of the Mediterranean. Among the many obstacles identified are the overriding and economically negative impact of globalized capitalism, and the determination of the United States to impose its own hegemonic political objectives on the Middle Eastern region.