Brussels, 03/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - ARLEM (the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly) ended its meeting in Bari, Italy, on Monday 29 January 2012 by saying that it had a key role to play in EuroMed dialogue, setting up new structures and appointing Ramon-Luis Valcarel-Siso (of Murcia, Spain), the future president of the Committee of the Regions, as one of the vice-presidents, along with Youssef Ali Abderrahmane (governer of the Gizeh province of Egypt), until August 2012. ARLEM decided to set up new structures to deal more effectively with the challenges expected to arise in 2012.
ARLEM hopes in this way to deal with a request for greater involvement on the ground and to strengthen its offering of sustainable development training courses through its cooperation agreement with the EMUNI EuroMed University headed by Joseph Mifsud of Malta. At the meeting, Croatia joined ARLEM, and Libya is expected to apply to join. The Bari meeting was strongly influenced by the political backdrop to the EuroMed region, with the debt crisis and spending cuts in the north and the uprisings in 2011 in the southern and eastern areas of the Mediterranean. The various crises have led to a call for shifts in power and wealth in the various regions and for action to get the economies of the poorest regions growing again.
This message was echoed by virtually all the speakers, and the acting co-chair of the Europeans at the meeting, Mercedes Bresso (Piedmont, Italy, current President of the Committee of the Regions, see yesterday's newsletter), said that 2012 would be the year of the biggest challenges because it is still characterised by the continuing crisis in Syria, somersaults in Libya and uncertainty in North Africa.
The shared desire is to make ARLEM the focus of cooperation based on regional development and making stronger and better proposals for projects of benefit to the regions. Reports will be prepared for the upcoming meeting in Antakya (Turkey) in Febuary 2013 about what this means in practice. The reports will cover one of the main areas of business in the Mediterranean - sustainable tourism (rapporteur-designate is Michèle Saban of France, President of the Assembly of the Regions of Europe) - and education and training requirements (rapporteur-designate Nehal El Megharbel of Egypt).
The debate in Bari demonstrated a huge desire to participate in action, as was expressed by the mayor of Malaga (Spain), who called for greater mobility and use of the Erasmus Programme, or (as the mayor of Rabat put it) for greater attention to be paid to small businesses and microenterprises, or (as the former CoR president, Jacques Blanc, put it) for attention to focus on agriculture. Other speakers set out areas where the north and south Mediterranean could usefully complement each other and provide a promising area of cooperation, making the oft-quoted claim that “it is the south that is growing”. There was a sizeable presence of Egyptians and Algerians at the meeting, and local authority representatives from Mauritania played an active role. Nobody from Tunisia attended the meeting. (FB/transl.fl)