Brussels, 07/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - Even confronted with economic crisis, the EU must not turn its back on the Mediterranean, according to Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) Secretary General Youssef Amrani. In a message to the Lisbon Forum 2011 - a Council of Europe platform for dialogue - on Thursday, he said that the political changes in the region had “created new prospects and new opportunities”. The Mediterranean offers Europe “the chance to extend its area of economic influence and to widen its market”, he argued.
In comments reported in the press of his own country, Morocco, Amrani states that the “Arab Spring is heralding in a new age in the Mediterranean”, a region “on which the world's attention is focused”, because “the changes in the Southern Mediterranean societies and the economic crisis in Europe are two processes which will have a great effect on the region's development in the coming years”.
“These changes will impact directly on economic relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean and will affect bilateral and multilateral relations, change the way Europe cooperates with the region, particularly in terms of its neighbourhood policy, and bring changes in the way Euro-Mediterranean cooperation operates and the way partnerships are set up.” The countries of the southern rim of the Mediterranean “have to believe that Europe has something to offer”, he said, proposing “new regional governance”. In his view, “the UfM must provide the new framework for multilateral Euro-Mediterranean cooperation”. (FB/transl.rt)