Brussels, 02/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - France has announced that it intends to “overhaul” the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). President Nicolas Sarkozy made this announcement on television on Monday evening and his minister for foreign affairs, Alain Juppé, repeated the same message on Tuesday. This is still rather vague. The initiative set up on 13 July 2008 (with the holding of its founding conference in Paris) was also described as having a “premonitory” character. The political upheavals, which have shaken the Arab world, now appear to justify the urgent need to develop constructive dialogue between the two sides of the Mediterranean.
What shape will this relaunch take? Paris has still not revealed its intentions. The EU, quite simply, does not seem to have an idea at all. On Catherine Ashton's table are a range of options proposed by her staff on which she will have to make a decision. So far, she has not even provided an outline of what she intends to do to provide Mediterranean policy with a new course. The suspense might come to an end with the announcement of a renewed European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) towards the middle of March, on which the staff of Commissioner Stefan Füle are currently working.
The three scenarios submitted for the approval of Ms Ashton consist of formally acknowledging what already exists - a mixed UfM, half inter-governmental, half Community-led; the creation of a UfM, which is totally integrated into the EU's general Mediterranean policy; and finally, the construction of a totally autonomous intergovernmental structure, in which the EU as a Community body, would only play a supporting role, as it does in UN bodies, for example. Ashton will soon have to decide if she wishes to unblock the process and put forward a proposal to the Council, perhaps even at the special European Council on 11 March, in the knowledge, however, that total autonomy is being vigorously argued by the United Kingdom alone. British diplomacy is robustly arguing that the UfM has nothing to do with the EU at all.
The Secretariat General of the UfM, now finds itself having totally to re-organise after its leader stepped down on 1 March. The Secretary General has sent a letter saying as much to all the different actors in the Euro-Mediterranean process.
In another perspective, the newspaper, Le Figaro, brought a clarification on the original intentions, before the summit of 13 July 2008: the French foreign affairs ministry did not intend to include Israel in the project. The newspaper quotes a diplomat member of the ANMO (North Africa, Middle East) directorate, who declared: “We warned the French presidency, underlining the fact that the Arab countries would not agree to any practical collaboration in the project, as long as the Israeli-Palestinian question remained unsolved”. Will this factor be taken into account in the UfM overhaul? (F.B./transl.fl)