Brussels, 04/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission and Tunisia held consultations on 2 March in Brussels for setting up the "national action plan" project (NAP) as part of the "neighbourhood policy in the enlarged Union", a policy that sometimes provokes lively debates between Member States and the Commission and between the latter and the CFSP High Representative, Javier Solana, as well as within the Commission's services. The Mediterranean neighbourhood scheme involves three countries for whom association agreements have been implemented: Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan.
The first meeting with these countries around ten days ago facilitated exploratory conversations on the basis of a draft Commission document setting out the main lines of the NAP for each country in thematic chapters. The themes proposed are: dialogue and political reforms; economic, social and development reforms; trade, rules of the market and regulatory reforms; cooperation in justice and home affairs; cooperation in transport, energy, environment and information society; a new "people to people" approach which consists in putting the living forces of society in contact with each other (researchers, teachers, healthcare professionals etc.). The European Commission believes that this approach will enable the challenges of enlargement to be tackled more effectively, the consequences of which are going to profoundly upset the political, geographical and economic set up and relationships with Mediterranean neighbours.
The general objective of the "neighbourhood" scheme is to help countries that are nearby benefit from the advantages of the internal market, as well as getting them to respect the limits. In this perspective, negotiations will focus on how the "four freedoms" will be respected, which are fundamental to the new approach and represent another advantage to that offered in the association agreement. It will also look into possibilities for as much convergence as possible relating to non-tariff mechanisms such as on phytosanitary standards, administrative and customs procedures etc.
Tunisia considers that the approach should be "balanced and coherent" for the three aspects of the future NAP in order to encourage close parallel development. Mohamed Mezghami, the Head of the Tunisian delegation believes that the three aspects should "develop in the same way and the same intensity". He is also calling on the EU "to pay the same attention" to the implementation of the four freedoms, as well as to freedom of movement of goods, capital services and people. "Tunisia, which made the strategic choice of cooperation with the EU agrees completely with what was declared in Tunis by president Prodi and recently by Commissioner Verheugen", namely their intention to link the EU to its Mediterranean neighbours "in all areas excluding institutions". Tunisia hopes that this will be reflected in practice in the contents of the future NAP so that ongoing "exploratory negotiations" will be continued at the end of March so that the Commission can present the General Affairs Council in May, then the European Council, with the common conclusions of the consultations.
The General Affairs Council recently examined this issue. Some Member States and also, it is believed, Mr Solana, have requested that they be better informed about progress in these consultations. They said that they were afraid that they might have given birth to unfounded hopes. The Commission believes that it should remain within the strict context of its mandate granted in June 2003. Criticism is directed at the rhythm and content of these consultations to be concluded with the three Mediterranean countries. Some Member States have even wanted the new "neighbourhood" policy to be more centred on East European countries. The Council will be dealing with this in more detail next May when it deals with the three NAP projects with Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan, which will be concluded and ready for submission to debate with other Member States.