Brussels, 03/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - The meeting of energy ministers of the 43 Euro-Mediterranean area countries, scheduled to take place on Wednesday 2 June in Cairo, was quite simply cancelled at Egypt's request. Egypt holds the co-presidency of the UfM (Union for the Mediterranean), together with France. Representatives of participant countries were not informed until the last minute and had lost all hope of receiving the formal letter of invitation to a meeting that had long been scheduled. Experts had already been in touch for preparing the meeting. No text for a joint declaration had been circulated prior to the meeting, which shows that there could not have been any discrepancy over content or even over wording in connection with the Palestinian territories, as was the case during the previous sectoral meetings. It would appear, at a guess, that the general climate in the Middle East brought about the request for deferral of the meeting. Other representatives see deferral as a sign that the content of sector-specific cooperation in some areas is weakening (water, tourism, agriculture, culture, etc) at a time when budgetary restraints are foreseeable in this time of crisis, and when UfM structures are being laboriously set in place. Spain, however, had bargained on consensus being reached at the Cairo meeting on energy for the triggering of a physical integration process with electricity links between the north and south of the Mediterranean to carry any electricity surpluses. This was indicated by Spain's secretary of state for energy, Pedro Marin, during a meeting on the common prospects of renewable energies in Valence in early May.
Further to our articles yesterday on the secretariat of UfM, Paris and Barcelona have pointed out that the personalities currently in place (including two diplomats, one Moroccan and one Egyptian) are only there temporarily and remain available for their own countries. The final decision on appointing a cabinet director (a post that France is calling for), and on other posts at various levels of the administrative and technical hierarchy, will not be known until internal procedures and rules have been fine-tuned and, above all, until the budget is available. The only post that has been official since 28 May is that of the secretary general. (F.B./transl.jl)