Brussels, 15/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - The working group responsible for the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum for preparing the decision of the Foreign Ministers of the Barcelona Process countries on the creation of a joint parliamentary assembly in Naples early December is to meet at the European Parliament on Thursday and Friday.
The last Forum meeting, foreseen for March of this year in Crete, had been deferred in the context of the war on Iraq. The working group must decide on a new date. The meeting will probably be held in Athens, in December. In the meantime, the southern rim countries must decide who is to take over from Abdelwahed Radi, President of the Moroccan Assembly, who has so far held the post of co-president with the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox. Candidates from several countries have been put forward (Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia). The president of the Egyptian parliament, Ahmed-Fathi Sourour, is said to be the favourite.
Points on the agenda include questions on the composition, the financing of the joint structure to be created and adoption of a draft regulation.
The key question is that which still separates the European Parliament and the national parliaments: each wants to have a leading role in the process of parliamentary dialogue that there was at the outset, conceived separately in two parallel approaches. The resolve to group these two processes has still to be given concrete substance, all the more as many of the representative houses, mainly of northern European countries, still express doubt about how useful it is to create an ad hoc structure and binding operating and decision-making rules (majority decision-making, etc).
In the meantime, the national parliaments maintain their own process. A preparatory meeting for a 4th meeting of the presidents of the Mediterranean parliaments should take place in Malta in coming weeks, at the initiative of the Italian parliament. The three other meetings were held in Palma de Majorca (March 1999), Alexandria (May 2000) and Athens (February 2002).