Brussels, 23/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, who is also a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly Bureau, has expressed his “disappointment” at the postponement of the UfM (Union for the Mediterranean) summit. The fact that the summit has been put off for a second time (after that in June) sends a “negative political signal” to the partnership that the EU hopes to set up with the countries of the Mediterranean. President Buzek pointed out that, at the Euro-Mediterranean Assembly Bureau meeting in Rome on 12 November, the four members (presidents of the assemblies of Italy, Morocco, Jordan and the European Parliament) urged heads of state and government to give strong momentum to the Euro-Mediterranean partnership and to allow effective operation of its institutions and implementation of major projects.
The ambition of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly is to form the “parliamentary dimension” of the UfM, and its members visualise renaming it the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean, PAUM or PA-UfM. This has not yet been decided. Some observers believe the Assembly is surrounded by institutional confusion between the various bodies responsible for Euro-Mediterranean dialogue - something that Catherine Ashton's services are seeking to clear. The UfM “does not spring directly from the EU but from its member states and the Union must now define its link through the European co-presidency of the new structure”, Christian Jouret, who heads the Middle East unit at the Council of the EU, recently confirmed. The joint Assembly may thus, in accordance with these comments, nurture the ambition of being the embodiment of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership as a whole (including association agreements and the part relating to neighbourhood policy) and not of a UfM henceforth restricted to project management (see EUROPE 10257 and 10259). (F.B./transl.jl)