Despite sporadic attempts at western Mediterranean co-operation through the ‘Five plus Five’ grouping, the 1990s saw few signs of the emergence of a coherent security community in this purported ‘sub-region’ of the Mediterranean. A western Mediterranean dynamic has proved difficult to develop owing to the highly asymmetrical nature of this ‘sub-region’ — not only in terms of differing national capacities to address security challenges unilaterally or bilaterally, but also because of the greater degree of integration of the southern European countries and their commitments to organizations such as the EU and NATO.

There remains, however, the theoretical possibility that a protracted sub-regional conflict, namely the Western Sahara dispute, might provide an opportunity for key players to reach a compromise solution and thereby not only put an end to the conflict itself but also lay the foundations for further security co-operation in the future. This working paper explores recent developments in the Western Sahara conflict to see whether there is any basis for expecting a sub-regional solution involving Morocco, Algeria, France and Spain.