Barcelona, 25/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - The Economic Forum of the Western Mediterranean, organised jointly by the group of ten countries from the Mediterranean's northern and southern shores, and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), took place in Barcelona on 23 October and was attended by the president of the Spanish Council of Ministers, Mariano Rajoy who strongly asserted that the human and geographical reality that exists needs a dynamic economic dimension as well to ensure the security of the countries that border the Mediterranean.
The ten ministers spoke about economic cooperation in an open session and they also discussed security and immigration in a separate session. The foreign affairs ministers from Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Malta attended alongside their counterparts - most of them new - from Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Libya and Tunisia.
“We share values” with which the countries from around the Mediterranean must face the “tragedy with incalculable consequences” - consequences that are caused by “the uncontrolled flows of migrants to Lampedusa”, said the Spanish prime minister. “We are calling on the EU for greater effort” in supporting the countries of transit and origin, he said. He called for “short-, medium-, and long-term support mechanisms” to be developed so that the Mediterranean might cease to be a “gulf” and so that it is not be transformed into “a mass grave”. We have, he said, “the duty to cooperate” in all domains. The 5+5 countries are, in his opinion, a good practical framework for dialogue, a “tool” for strengthening relations and a “defence instrument” against challenges that are collectively faced. This cooperation that the Spanish minister wants does not only concern the northern and southern shores but also just the European countries bordering the Mediterranean among themselves, and the minister gave the example of the “railway corridor” designed to strengthen their economic and human exchanges.
Rui Chancellere de Machete, the Portuguese minister who is the president of the 5+5, believes that the holding of this first economic forum of the Mediterranean is “the proof of the resolve to cooperate” and “to identify opportunities” for working in common. “We share a common identity and many common interests. We must strengthen our economic complementarity”, he said.
The 5+5 group intends “to go further than interministerial exchanges” and to involve public and private economic operators to highlight the potential of the Mediterranean, which - north and south together - represents 7.1% of world trade, according to Machete, 8.8% in exports and 9.3% in imports, bringing together 700 million people. The other co-president, Mauritania's minister for foreign affairs, Ahmed Ould Teguedi, adds to this economic and human need, the need to unite all the member countries' efforts at security, and he wants the French intervention in Mali to be supported.
During the opening session, the secretary general of the UfM, Fathallah Sijilmassi, recalled all the commitments taken by his organisation, while affirming the hope of entering a real phase of achievement. The international financial institutions are thought to have committed to financing a number of projects approved by the UfM, he stated. (FB/transl.fl)