Brussels, 15/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - Visiting Tallinn (Estonia) on Tuesday 13 January, Mbarka Bouaida, the minister delegate to Morocco's minister for foreign affairs and cooperation, underlined the importance of the outlook for relations between the EU and its neighbourhood. She said that it is “in the mutual interest of all parties to make the neighbourhood policy a real lever for achieving prosperity, stability and security in the countries bordering the EU”, according to a statement reported by Morocco's official news agency MAP.
Bouaida highlighted Morocco's desire for the recast by those in charge of the neighbourhood policy in Brussels to lead to greater effectiveness and better coordination - which the partner countries have on many occasions said they would like. The partner countries have often called for a better balance in the attention given to the two areas. The debate which followed Bouaida's speech at the diplomatic academy of Estonia led to a comparative assessment of the support proposed to the eastern countries and that proposed to the Mediterranean countries. MAP remains cautious in its account of the content of the debate, simply mentioning the “lessons to be learned in particular from the association/free trade agreements that the EU concluded with Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine as part of the Eastern Partnership”. (FB)