The Mediterranean and Black Sea: regional integration and maritime nationalism

Cooperation is the core mechanism in UNCLOS for the management of enclosed and semi-enclosed seas. There is a sizeable history of cooperation between the coastal States in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea based on politics and socio-economics, but conditions have changed greatly over the last 20 years. The processes of regional integration, centred, fundamentally, on the northern shore, and expressions of nationalism, including maritime nationalism, are shaping a new stage on which to strive for the cooperative system which is essential for the governance of a sea where sharp imbalances and demographic pressure that, in the short term, point to a significant worsening of environmental conditions, coexist.