The adverse effects of pollution and of rising temperatures are compounded by over-fishing: fish caught for human consumption have become smaller and fewer, and modern methods of trawling and dredging have wreaked calamity not just for the fish that reach our tables but for other inhabitants of the sea varying in size from crustaceans to dolphins and whales. It goes without saying that the ecological problem is one that can only be solved by intensive collaboration on a scale that is totally lacking just now. We can debate whether the idea behind the Mediterranean Union was as much to keep Turkey out of the EU as to promote co-operation across the Mediterranean. What we can say is that the degree of commercial, cultural and even political integration achieved by the ancient Romans has never been repeated, and the Mediterranean of the 21st century is fragmented and fragile.

The results of the latest Greek election raise once again the spectre of Greece's exclusion from the euro, and some predict that France under the Hollande regime will be added to the list of seriously ailing EU states. Resolving the relationship with the non-EU countries around the Mediterranean will become an even less significant priority for the members of the Union. Prospects for the creation of tight bonds linking all the Mediterranean countries in common enterprises fade. The 21st-century Mediterranean remains, therefore, broken and in need of repair.