Brussels, 15/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (PA-UfM), which held its 9th plenary meeting in Brussels on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 April, ended the session with the designation of its new president, Sa'asd Hail al-Sourour, the president of the Jordanian House of Representatives. He is to succeed Martin Schulz, European Parliament President.
The PA-UfM appealed for greater support for the countries bordering on Syria, which are having to face huge inflows of refugees. It also evoked the customary position held on the Middle East, placing on an equal footing the responsibility of violence around Gaza, which gave rise to intense but inconsequential debate. In the end, the strongly disputed wording was kept unchanged.
A final resolution was adopted giving details of a long series of political, economic, social and cultural recommendations addressed to the institutions of the EU, to the EU member states and to the 43 UfM member nations. The main recommendation aims to strengthen the parliamentary dimension of that dialogue which is struggling to take shape.
Schulz, the outgoing president of the EuroMed Assembly, said that, if parliaments are the new source of legitimacy in the Arab world in transformation, then the PA- UfM must also be the new source of legitimacy in renewed Euro-Mediterranean relations.
The political and economic context and budgetary restrictions are involved when it comes to explaining why Euro-Mediterranean policy is finding it so hard to take off. Schulz, like many other parliamentarians present, believes that, to the obstacles that are already well known, one can add governments' lack of enthusiasm and lack of active involvement. He deplored their lack of interest. Government, Schulz bemoaned, are not doing enough to support the initiative. He felt that there is no point in putting proposals forward to simply come up against a weak political will and austerity.
Parliamentary dialogue and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean are among the best tools to build confidence and to give impetus and legitimacy to tangible projects ranging from women in leadership to water management, from energy cooperation to institution building”, the EP president added.
The Parliamentary Assembly also called for expedited implementation for concrete UfM projects, especially in the field of renewable energies and environmental protection, such as the Mediterranean Solar Plan, the “Eco-Towns” network, the creation of protected maritime underwater parks, and better waste management. Parliamentarians took a stance in favour of the creation of a “specific financial instrument” and in favour of better investment coordination for banks and European institutions in the region. Some parliamentarians, however, pointed out that there were limits to this exercise given the current economic context. The Assembly even evoked the financial commitments taken by governments at the summit in Paris in 2008 and that in Deauville in 2011.
Recommendations in the field of culture include the creation of a multilingual Euro-Mediterranean television channel and university programmes such as “Erasmus Mundus”.
Furthermore, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been welcomed as a new member of the PA-UfM and as new observer to the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM). (FB/transl.jl)