Barcelona, 18/11/2010 (Agence Europe) -The meeting organised by Euromesco, the Euro-Mediterranean Study and Dialogue on Political Cooperation and Security network, and IEMED, the European Institute of the Mediterranean, was organised to allow the voice of the academic world to be heard before the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) summit scheduled to be held in Barcelona on 21 November (but postponed). It has now become an assessment body for putting forward proposals for lasting and credible reactivation of the process. The question most frequently raised is that regarding the connection between the UfM and the European Union. On behalf of the EU Council, Christian Jouet, who heads the Middle East unit, pointed out that the UfM does not stem directly from the EU but from its member states and that the Union must now define its link through the European co-presidency of the new structure. The debate on this subject is not yet over and should allow the role of European diplomacy in this process to be defined. Such a debate is all the more necessary as, since the decision taken by the Senior Officials Committee on 12 November this year, it is now clear that the mandate of the secretariat general is restricted to management of the six priority projects defined by the founding summit in Paris in July 2008.
As things stand, focus is above all on what led to a relative failure of the UfM (political deadlock but “technical” progress). Speakers present set out the many, political and process restructuring reasons for this. Most blamed the “institutional confusion” that must be overcome. In the first years of this century, the political framework established by the Barcelona Declaration was modified and the uncoupling of its multilateral and bilateral components allowed a new path to be opened to the UfM and to European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) respectively, said Senen Florensa, IEMED Director General and former ambassador in the Maghreb countries, who went on to add that, while the ENP remains a policy stemming from the EU, the UfM emerged as an intergovernmental project. To this must be added a differentiation between the “bilateral ENP and the Euro-Mediterranean partnership” in its regional approach which, to date, has not been resolved. Youssef Amrani, Secretary General of the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, felt that, “although the UfM has been through some turbulent times, it has not known a systemic crisis that has threatened its very existence” and “it is not written that the Middle East conflict will remain a stumbling block to regional cooperation for ever”. In his eyes, the most important thing is to maintain this partnership “between equals”, saying that, becoming a part of the partnership will depend on how members integrate and how the new equal approach is assumed. One condition might be to “capitalise more on what was achieved in Barcelona and manage to create synergies between enhanced cooperation with variable geometry”. Lotfi Boumghar, Director of the Institut national algérien d'études stratégiques (INESG), believes it is a matter of urgency to ensure consistency between all approaches and focus as a priority on experience that “works” with reference to the former “5+5” dialogue grouping the western, European and southern rim Mediterranean countries. Andreu Bassols, who represents the European Commission within the UfM secretariat general drew attention to all that has been achieved under every form of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation.
In the continuing debates, many speakers underlined the need to rationalise the approach and to think, as one speaker pointed out, of the operating software rather than of the applications. There is an obvious “Mediterranean demand” which is to be met but the response is not yet to be found in any of the existing frameworks.
The result is that it is now time for questions and suggestions, and various proposals have been made on the way to structure dialogue with great expectations of what common European diplomacy may achieve - Catherine Ashton in this case. The two discussion days were to tackle the link between the Euro-Mediterranean approach and the new European foreign policy and to look at ways to avoid duplication. Jouret explained that the debate is now open within the European institutions.
European diplomacy will only have political clout if it encompasses the Mediterranean, it was said. The involvement of Turkey, as a useful and active intermediary, and regional policy in the Mediterranean were cited as areas in which European diplomacy may find strength and fully play the role that it is constantly called upon to play for solving the main subject of global concern - the Middle East conflict in which it appears a passive player. (F.B./transl.jl)