The main objective of this paper is to examine the state of adoption and implementation of competition rules in the 12 Southern Mediterranean countries (the "Mediterranean Partners") engaged in association agreements with the EC in the framework of the Barcelona Declaration of November 1995.

This paper discusses challenges for competition authorities in the 21st century. Those challenges were identified on the basis of a statistical review of the articles published since January 2011 in five major antitrust law journals. The assumption underlying this literature review is that the...