Book excerpt: Originally published in 1999, Bridges and Barriers is a detailed study of the European Union’s Mediterranean Policy from the initial agreements in the 1960s to the recent Euro-Mediterranean Partnership . The scope of this analysis includes the Maghreb and Mashreq countries in addition to Turkey, Malta, Israel, the Occupied Territories and Cyprus. The authors argue that the limited success of trade and development policy in this region resulted from endogenous and exogenous factors: examples of the former include the lack of the political will necessary to implement trade, aid and reform policies, while the latter include the energy crisis of the 1970s, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Cold War.