Brussels, 20/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - Miguel Angel Moratinos, a former Spanish foreign minister and one of those who designed the Euro-Mediterranean process says that “Barcelona” calls for a “renewal of the relationship between the EU and the Mediterranean countries, which takes account of the major imperative of the resurgence of the security challenge, and which operates a differentiation between the issue of Europe's neighbourhood in the South and that in the East”.
Moratinos' statement is reported by the Lebanese daily newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour in a report on a conference in Beirut the previous week. The conference was on recasting the EU's neighbourhood policy. According to the same source, Moratinos “recommended sweeping away the past - in other words, reconsidering the schemes gradually set up - from the Barcelona process (1995) to the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) (2007)”.
Questioned by the newspaper, Moratinos said it is necessary “to resume talks with the Syrian regime and also to recognise a role for Iran in Syria, if we want to reach a solution one day capable of putting an end to this war”. (Fathi B'Chir)