Brussels, 22/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA) will hold a special session on 20-21 November to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Barcelona Process. (Ordinary sessions take place in March every year). The president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, acting president of the EMPA chaired Tuesday morning's meeting in an enlarged Assembly office where he gave a date for this session. This “unanimous” decision of the bureau does not, however, settle the issue of the location. It is very likely that the session will be in Rabat rather than in Jericho or Ramallah as initially planned for giving this special meeting a symbolic character and underlining the desire of the countries in the Euro-Med zone to strive for peace and understanding. Morocco was consulted by president Borrell during his meeting to Rabat but it has still not given an answer although, according to Abdelwahed Radi, president of the Moroccan Assembly, the agreement was given at the end of the ongoing consultations. The main Moroccan reservation is that of wanting to avoid offending the Palestinians one of whose representatives (a member of the National Council, the Palestinian Parliament), strongly regretted at Tuesday's meeting of the Political, Security and Human Rights Committee at EMPA, that the idea of symbolically meeting in one of the towns of the West Bank had been abandoned. The Europeans say that the change was made at the request of other Arab countries.
The three EMPA committees met on 15 September (the Economic Affairs Committee in Brussels), 19 September (Cultural and Immigration Affairs Committee in Rome, attended by European Commissioner Frattini) and 20 September (Political, Security and Human Rights Committee, with Commission Director General for external relations, Eneko Landaburu). On 21 September in Brussels, EMPA members met to set up two working groups, one on the Middle East and the other on anti-personnel mines. (EUROPE will be returning to these discussions, which aim to elaborate an overall solution to submit to Heads of State and Governments on 27-28 November in Barcelona).
EMPA members consider it essential at this stage to organise their work and establish common work methods to resolve the quite confusing situation, which had been observed of late and which has been acknowledged by several deputies from both sides. The other drawback to the EMPA work is seen to be a tendency of its members, particularly those from the Middle East to deliver big and general speeches on prospects or dangers to peace in their region. The session on the Middle East illustrated this difficult of getting out of avoiding “denunciatory speeches” and for the need to focus on practical action as part of EMPA's competencies.