Compatibility of regionalizing actors’ activities in the Mediterranean region; what kind of opportunity for the European Union?

Using conceptualization of levels of regionalism and twofold typology of actors (governmental [GOV]–non-governmental [NON-GOV] and external–internal), this article presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of regionalizing actors’ activities in the Mediterranean in order to assess their compatibility in different fields of regional cooperation. The research thesis supported in the article is, that the Mediterranean is a region where formulation of a common idea on the content of regional cohesiveness is still a subject of highly competitive process of contestation which gives opportunity to the EU’s actorness. Results show a prevailing influence of external inter-GOV actors which has already altered regional activities of internal actors in three ways: (1) there are examples of ‘defensive’ and ‘agenda influencing’ reactions of few internal informal inter-GOV fora in political-economic-human rights fields, especially to the EU’s inter-regional practices, and lately absence of GOV regionalizing actors; (2) there are supportive (EU agenda following) reactions of regional non-governmental (NON-GOV) actors present in functional and also human rights fields and (3) despite poor market regionalization regional NON-GOV functional cooperation is growing especially under external inter-governmental ‘sponsorship’, which has consolidated existence of new regionalizing actors, i.e. multi-actor coalitions. The latter also represent the biggest immediate opportunity for the EU’s actorness.