Tangiers, 27/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - ARLEM (the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly, known by its French acronym), which held its fifth annual session in Tangiers (Morocco) on Monday 24 February, stresses in its conclusions the duty to set in place proactive and coherent cooperation in the Mediterranean: “The current process of globalisation sheds light on considerable changes, with new emerging regions and new challenges to be faced”. In the view of ARLEM, the time is right for the “implementation of Euro-Mediterranean territorial cooperation”. It emphasises the duty of helping “local skills” to develop through an exchange of experience and sponsorship. One example referred to is that of the town of Haïfa (Israel), which has offered its support to the neighbouring Palestinian town of Jenine, to organise a network for the disposal of waste water, which is currently discharged into the sea.
The suggested approach can become reality “through a cohesion policy (and by) the creation of a macro-regional strategy”.
In the view of the author of the report debated on Monday, Joana Ortega i Alemany (Catalonia), “we are facing an unprecedented historical process (…) which could lead to permanent change in the societies of the Mediterranean basin countries, and within their government and administrative structures”. This will be the price of the Mediterranean areas of the EU to coming out of crisis, and it is also a “key challenge for the areas of the south and east of the Mediterranean, as well as the democratic transition - after the Arab Spring - and decentralisation”. The merit of a “macro-regional” approach will be that it pays “particular attention to rural areas, areas experiencing industrial transition and regions suffering from serious and ongoing natural or demographic handicaps”.
This approach will allow the “effective, more efficient, better targeted and better coordinated implementation of the cooperation in the framework of the European neighbourhood policy (ENP) and of the UfM”. The Council of Ministers is called upon to “follow up our request for the creation of new macro-regional strategies for the Mediterranean in the near future”, the Assembly concluded. The objective will have been achieved “if the regions are taken into account in their diversity” and “if the local authorities genuinely and effectively participate in the cohesion and neighbourhood (ENP) policies of the EU”. The experience gathered by the EU in the rebalancing and the cohesion of its own regions is referred to and sought in support of cross-border cooperation. (FB)