Brussels, 25/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - Catherine Ashton, European High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has put a proposal to the foreign ministers of the EU, with a view to temporarily resolving the issue of the appointment of the European co-president of the UfM (Union for the Mediterranean). This information was relayed by the Spanish media, which are already delighted at the prospect of seeing Spain take over from France in this position. This has been confirmed in Brussels by authorised source. Ashton has suggested that the post be held over a period of one to two years by a member state mandated to do so by the Council of the EU. This way of working would give enough time to allow the European members of the UfM to agree on a means of appointing their co-president with regard to the Lisbon Treaty, until the European External Action Service (EEAS) gets up and running.
The Paris declaration (July 2008), which was adopted by the founding “summit”, and the declaration of the foreign ministers of the UfM in Marseille in November of the same year remained somewhat vague on this issue, as they did on the duration of the mandate of the secretary general and on the very nature of the institution in general - whether it should be intergovernmental or linked to the European institutions.
The first response came on 19 October, in conclusion of a legal study presented by the Council of the EU's senior officials with responsibility the Euro-Mediterranean policy, meeting in Dubrovnik (Croatia). It appears from this that the UfM and its secretariat general are not stand-alone international institutions, in view of their founding texts. These conclusions confirm the view that the structure needs to be “technical and light” and its competence is limited to the conceptual, financial and technical coordination of joint projects. It was in this light that the working programme and budget proposed by the secretariat general were rejected, as they were not felt to reflect this limited mission, and were gradually brought down to more modest proportions (from €14.5 million in the initial proposal to a figure below €6 million, according to a recent tour de table in Dubrovnik). In any case, the budget will not be operational until a formula for a division of the contributions, from the European Communities and 34 member countries, has been decided upon and the payments have actually been made. It will take until 18 November, on the eve of the Barcelona “summit” (if it takes place, with doubts related to the situation in the Middle East appearing to worsen) to know more about whether the UfM will be able to get itself into market order. It will be threatened with “payment cessation” in a few weeks' time if an agreement has not been made on the funding of its common structures.
In the meantime, sectorial meetings scheduled for the autumn (agriculture and employment) have been cancelled. The meetings on trade and education will still take place, but it has not been ruled out that they could be postponed. This would be to do with both the general perspectives (lessening interest in the UfM, which has been mentioned by concordant European and Arab sources, and which an increasingly poor turnout of the representatives of the countries would seem to confirm) and the backdrop of the peace process in the Middle East, which is not felt to be particularly encouraging. On top of this, according to various sources from either side of the Mediterranean, comes a psychological atmosphere which seems to be creating a feeling of unease at the secretariat general in Barcelona and which was discussed at the formal debates in Dubrovnik. (F.B./transl.fl)