Population and development scenarios for eleven EU neighbour countries in the Mediterranean Region

George Groenewold, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Joop De Beer, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Corina Huisman, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was implemented in 2004 at the time of enlargement of the EU, and was followed in 2008 by the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), a multilateral partnership between 26 EU and 16 neighbour countries of which 11 are Mediterranean Basin countries (MED11). ENP and UfM goals are to avoid emergence of new dividing lines between the EU and neighbour countries and instead strengthen prosperity, stability and security of all countries. Realization of these goals is influenced by demographic factors and pressures in both EU and neighbour countries. Objective of this paper is to present four population scenarios for MED11 countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine (OPT), Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey). Scenario results were obtained as follows. In a first step, four qualitative economic-political development scenarios were composed to describe plausible futures in terms of economic development (increase vs. decrease) and political/economic cooperation between EU and MED11 countries (strong vs. weak) covering the period 2010-2050. Scenarios were labelled Business-as-Usual (BAU), Integration, Alliance, and Stress. In a second step, four qualitative scenarios were composed describing how indicators of fertility, mortality, and international migration might change if people in MED11 countries would come to live in different macro-economic and political contexts. In a third step, qualitative scenarios were operationalized leading to four different sets of quantitative assumptions about expected trends in indicators of fertility, mortality, and international migration. These were used to actually make population scenarios for MED11 countries. The paper concludes by reflecting on (1) the implications of scenario results for the total population and working-age and old-age population segments in MED11 countries, (2)the scenario results in light of expected population change in EU countries, and (3) a comparison of scenarios results with UN medium variant projections results for MED11 countries.