Brussels, /02/2010 (Agence EUROPE) Senior officials from 43 EU countries around the Mediterranean and the Balkans in charge of following up the Euro-Mediterranean process held a meeting on Tuesday 9 February in Brussels. This meeting again aimed to finalise the structures of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). A secretary general was appointed and is soon expected to take up his post at the designated centre in Barcelona. Two stumbling blocks, however, still persist with regard to him beginning his mandate: the adoption of statutes - the problem on which the appointment of the deputy secretary-generals is stumbling, and the allocation of their different competencies. Cyprus appears difficult to convince on the question of setting up a sixth post in Turkey. It will then be necessary to reach a common decision on the distribution of the different portfolios, in the knowledge that up until now Lebanon appears reluctant that Israel should receive the portfolio for science and research. Forecasts made on the eve of this senior officials' meeting did not appear to suggest any swift solution to the blockage and a political decision still remains difficult to predict.
Points on the agenda include: the adoption of the work programme that will propose the many different sectoral meetings (energy, environment, youth, industry, etc) and an initial examination of the list of projects for the UfM. Senior officials will also make formal contact with the new regional structure set out by the local authorities under the auspices of the Committee of the Regions, the Regional and Local Euro-Mediterranean Assembly (ARLEM). Speaking on Sunday evening on the television, French parliamentarian, Henri Guaino, the special adviser to the French president and chief instigator behind the UfM, declared that he was confident and certain that the right decisions had been made. He stated: “The lesson that we are going to draw in the next few months is that the process has begun more slowly than expected but in a way that is irreversible. This seems an initial victory. Europe is not built in a day. In two years we have managed to begin something historic”.
Mr Guaino asserted that “the great revolution was to find a way out of the Barcelona process (which belongs to Europe) and move on to a form of North-South co-ownership and shared responsibility. This is no longer development aid with strings but rather co-development, joint investments and assuming together a kind of shared destiny that will take time to implement because changes in habits are required both in the North and South. However, things are progressing. We have set up co-presidencies, the secretariat will be set up and the next summit in June will take place in Barcelona, Spain. Things are taking shape … the second revolution involves putting the Union of the Mediterranean at the centre of the projects. This will be a Union of projects. It will also be necessary to discuss in this context, immigration, food and a lot of subjects that involve us and which require debate and joint decisions. This will not necessarily be done at unanimity - the principle is one of variable geometry, so that all those who feel concerned can work together”. Mr Guaino returned to the subject of the process's origins and had no regrets about the method chosen, which had received a high degree of criticism. He explained: “We can always say that it did not start well. We can also point out that it was perhaps the clumsy way that enabled us to develop something. Was it ever imaginable that when the president of the republic launched this idea, we would in the period of just a few months be able to fundamentally reform the Barcelona process? This did not look realistic at all … and the fact that we were attacked in this way and it was said that France had a certain vision of the future in the Mediterranean … provoked heated but ultimately healthy debate. When they saw this proposal, a lot of countries in Europe, including Germany, told us that they wanted to take part and not remain on the outside. The sharpness of the debate allowed us to be more ambitious in the project adopted on 13 July 2008. I'm not sure that we would have been able to go as far if there had not been such a debate. We have to accept that in Europe the principle of debate and putting ideas on the table is something that creates a certain upset. What is extraordinary is that we had a lively debate and developed an ambitious project. This is politics and it is all about overcoming taboos. Ultimately, the method was not a bad one”. (F.B./transl.fl)