Brussels, 28/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Addressing the senior officials (ambassadors) responsible for the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue, who were meeting on Tuesday 27 October at one of their periodic sessions, Luxembourg's foreign minister and acting president of the Council of the EU, Jean Asselborn, said that the Euro-Mediterranean partnership “must be strengthened in order to be able to deal collectively, effectively and sustainably with the numerous challenges in the Mediterranean”.
The “significant challenges” with which the Euro-Mediterranean area is faced require action on “the security and socio-economic levels”, Asselborn stated. “The conflicts, migration and illegal immigration, terrorism, extremism, youth employment, weak growth and climate change are challenges shared by the all the countries in the region and these challenges need urgent, collective and regional responses”, he said.
Asselborn hailed the role of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the initiative taken by its co-chairs (the EU and Jordan) to organise a ministerial level meeting in Barcelona on 26 November - the first since the common structure was created in 2008, Asselborn stated. In his view, it is “important to take stock of what has been achieved in 20 years of the Barcelona Process” so as “to work on a roadmap” and to start the relaunch of a Euro-Mediterranean process (which is struggling to take off). He nevertheless delivered a relatively satisfactory assessment, in that the UfM has identified a series of projects requiring €5 billion in financing. The mobilisation of funds remains the main stumbling block, however, to achieving such projects for job creation and sustainable development.
Luxembourg underlined the interest of an initiative it launched in July for job creation - an initiative which is still be to be discussed by the senior officials. Asselborn hopes that the initiative will be launched officially in a ministerial session in Barcelona on 1 December. More broadly, he said, “given the enormous challenges, it seems to me that the UfM should be strengthened” and “provided with adequate financial resources”. He also said he thought the UfM should be given “an increased role” in revising the European neighbourhood policy.
Asselborn spoke of the great political challenges for the countries in the region, starting with “the priority issue” of “the flow of migrants [that] forces us to face our responsibilities”. He regretted the fact that “in times of crisis, unilateral desires and nationalist reflexes (indeed populist) unfortunately tend to re-appear”. However, “no country is able to confront this unprecedented crisis alone”, he warned, saying that he believed that “looking inwards is not the solution”. He said he hoped the summit in Valletta (11-12 November 2015) would set out a “comprehensive approach”.
Asselborn also spoke about Libya, where “the state apparatus is still in danger”. “The increase in violence and the absence of controls on migration flows to and from this country have created appropriate conditions for the emergence of criminal networks specialised in illegal migration and the trafficking of humans to Europe”. The issue is also linked to the Syrian conflict. “One Syrian in six has now fled his country. One Syrian in two has had to abandon his home. Every day 9,500 people are added to this list of displaced people. Every minute a family is forced to leave everything behind”. In Asselborn's view, the solution can only be political - not military, and not just humanitarian. He criticised the “destructive barbarity of ISIL” and also regretted “the extremely worrying situation in the Middle East”. “2015 has been the sad symbol of deadlock in the peace process, which now bears no more than the name”. It is “the total lack of credible political horizon that has led to the current violence, causing the spectre of a third intifada to re-emerge”. He reiterated his trust in the two state solution, but “to save [this], the method must be changed (…) There can be no more repetition of the steps that lead to nothing”. “A new negotiating format must be fostered”, “involving the Europeans and Arab countries more, to reactivate the role of the Security Council and to set a reasonable timeframe for the negotiations to reach a successful conclusion”, he stated. (Original version in French by Fathi B'Chir)