Brussels, 15/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Brussels on Thursday 14 November, transport ministers of the 43 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean area - 28 of which are members of the EU - carried out an evaluation of cooperation begun in 2005, the results of which appear promising. “The main challenge in coming years is to know how to go from a purely technical reasoning to a truly operational investment programme” (our translation), said the secretary general of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), Fathallah Sijilmassi, in his keynote address alongside Commissioner Siim Kallas.
Cooperation was initiated within the Barcelona Process with a regional transport action plan (RTAP) applied over a six-year period (2007-2013), to be succeeded by a new plan from 2014 until 2020, the guidelines of which were approved on this occasion. The experts, grouped within the Euro-Mediterranean Transport Forum, a permanent joint structure, will tackle the details while stepping up regional integration, especially the regulatory plan, and complementarity between strategies in each of the member states. Ministers, whose first joint meeting dates back to 2005, have pledged not to allow such a long lapse of time to pass before they hold their third meeting, in 2016.
A final declaration has been adopted. It reviews all points and “recognises the importance of working together with neighbouring regions across all transport modes, including multimodal operations, to improve their safety, security, environmental and social performance”. The ministerial declaration also “encourages the EU to continue its cooperation in the Euromed transport framework under the auspices of the UfM, with the aim of promoting concrete priority projects already identified within the Trans-Mediterranean Transport Network”.
The new action plan is based on “two complementary pillars of regulatory reform and convergence in all relevant different transport sectors (maritime, road, railways, civil aviation and urban transport) and of the establishment of the future Trans-Mediterranean Transport Network (TMN-T) to be connected with the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T)”.
With this in mind, the UfM secretariat proposes action should be taken as a “catalyst” through three-fold engineering: technical, financial and political. Its main task in the raising of funds will be to deploy a strategy based on strengthened relations with the international and bilateral financial institutions and the development of long-term partnerships with the private sector, the secretary general points out. He says strategic alliances will be sought with those partnerships to build a viable financial framework, using public and private funds in a balanced manner.
It is to be noted that the final declaration does not cite major UfM projects (see EUROPE 10961). This omission has not yet been explained.
In parallel to the session, the UfM Secretariat whose role was significant in the work of reflection and the raising of funds, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Group of Transport Ministries in Western Mediterranean (GTMO 5+5) aimed at identifying synergies and defining concrete modalities for collaboration. (FB/transl.jl)