The foreign ministers of the ten EU and North African countries bordering the Mediterranean will meet in Marseilles on Friday 28 October to discuss regional crises and counter-terrorism and radicalisation, a subject of great concern for these countries and the rest of the EU alike.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said before the meeting that it would help strengthen dialogue and cooperation on security issues at a time when regional crises, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Sahel and the Middle-East are causing great concern. Tackling terrorism will be at the heart of discussions, he said. Ayrault will co-chair the meeting with the Moroccan foreign minister.
The meeting will take the intergovernmental 5+5 format of five EU nations (France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Malta) and five Arab Maghreb Union nations (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania). The EU has been invited as an observer and we were told in Brussels that EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini will attend.
Youth will be one of the focuses of the agenda on Friday. Young people’s expectations (mobility, training and jobs) need to be taken into account not only in terms of the economy, but also on the political, social affairs and cultural levels. A meeting of ministers with young people from the 5+5 countries will take place on the fringes of the meeting, according to sources in Paris.
On the migration crisis, ministers will try to agree common methods for responding to the crisis that concerns all 5+5 nations. Tackling climate change will be on the agenda, ahead of the opening of COP22 in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 7-18 November, with the idea of building a shared an sustainable development model in the Mediterranean.
One of the cited benefits of this informal sub-regional cooperation that is not governed by a treaty or general agreement is that it allows direct dialogue focused on practical, doable solutions on a virtual case-by-case basis.
Algeria will be taking over co-chairmanship from Morocco on behalf of southern Mediterranean countries, and has already issued a press release calling for an enlargement of the sectoral cooperation domains, as illustrated by the adoption in Algiers on 31 March 2015 of a Water Strategy in the Western Mediterranean. It says it wants to act to boost political dialogue and cooperation, particularly within the framework of greater cooperation on security issues.
A meeting of the high command of the armies of the ten nations in a 5+5 defence initiative took place in Algiers on 19 October. Algeria says the 5+5 defence initiative is one of the most active regional arenas in terms of multilateral cooperation and dialogue on security issues.
Against a regional background of high activity in fighting terrorism and organised crime, accentuated by crises caused by flows of migrants in the region, the 5+5 defence members are the leading players in security through their ability to gather around a regular dialogue and value-added military cooperation, said a representative for the Algerian high command at the start of the meeting.
The high commands recommended after the meeting more powerful cooperation in the Western Mediterranean and Algeria’s press agency said they stressed the 5+5 defence’s moving into new areas of interest, such as cyber-defence and climate change and how it impacts on security. (Original version in French by Fathi B’Chir)