Brussels, 25/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - There should be greater integration in the Mediterranean, said UfM (Union for the Mediterranean) Secretary General Fathallah Sijilmassi in Paris on Friday at a press conference on prospects for the EuroMed region.
He said that countries around the Mediterranean should cooperate more because regional integration is very weak at present, barely accounting for 5% of the region's foreign trade and even less for North Africa. Sijilmassi said that trade among the five countries in North Africa only accounts for 3% of their foreign trade, compared with 25% for ASEAN (South-East Asia), 20% for Mercosur (South America) and 65% for the European Union.
The UfM has taken it upon itself to get the region to take ownership of itself as a region and to promote common projects. He regretted that EuroMed countries sometimes come up with identical projects and argued that the UfM should try to merge duplicate projects.
He said the problem with getting people to put the EuroMed “union of projects” into action is was one of identification rather than financing because money's always available for good projects.
The obstacles are also political, due to the conflicts in the Middle East. Sijilmassi defended the presence of Israel in the UfM, although Israel's involvement is challenged by a number of other Mediterranean countries. Israel's opponents do not, however, envisage leaving the organisation. A representative of a member state that is unhappy about Israel's membership said the UfM only got involved in action that was not “polluted” by the Middle East conflict. Sijilmassi said Israel and Palestine were both members of UfM and each defends its own position. The Arab League is very active in the UfM although it only has observer status and despite the presence of Israel at all UfM meetings.
This situation explains why the UfM tends to focus on the western Mediterranean, which is not directly affected by the conflict in the Middle East. For its own survival, the UfM is becoming more closely connected with the 5+5 group of Western Mediterranean countries.
Morocco and Jordan are the only Arabic-speaking countries with direct or officially recognised diplomatic relations with Israel, which is why high-ranking UfM jobs tend to be held by Moroccans or Jordanians and meetings in the southern Mediterranean tend to be held in Morocco or Jordan, apart from meetings which do not involve Morocco. This sometimes leads to rivalries between different countries.
Until the 'revolution', Egypt had diplomatic ties with Israel. It had recently been demanding a greater share of the high-level jobs in an attempt to gain influence. The current process of renewing the leaders of the Anna Lindh Cultural Foundation is the most recent example of this “race for jobs” among southern Mediterranean countries, although they have mostly been passive members in the dialogue that was launched amidst great pomp and circumstance in 2008, but has failed to live up to expectations.
The UfM issues a raft of declarations and fine words but little in the way of tangible projects, apart from the holding of conferences and seminars and the promotion and labelling of projects that already existed.
Commentators tend to agree that the UfM has been more concerned in recent years with developing its own structures, ring-fencing its budget and collecting financial contributions from member states than with doing what it was set up for - launching big projects in the region. (FB)