Rabat, 21/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - EMPA, the Euromed Parliamentary Assembly, held an extraordinary session in Rabat on 21 November, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Barcelona process. The solution was preceded by intense- and occasionally heated- debates within its three committees (political and security, economic and social affairs, cultural and immigration), in which MEPs and national MPs of the countries of the EU and the Mediterranean partner countries voted in separate colleges). According to several of those who took the floor, the debate on recommendations to be put to the Barcelona summit of 27 and 28 November show the promising vitality of the only joint institution of dialogue between the two sides of the Mediterranean. According to President Borrell, the ambition is to make it into a "more frank, more transparent and more open" dialogue, and a democratic instrument for the control of the process. Two significant conclusions can be drawn from the long debate in Rabat: the unanimous call, by all three colleges, for the abolition of the death penalty and an appeal (on an Israeli initiative voted upon unreservedly by the Arab contingent) for the fight against "anti-semitism and Islamophobia". This Israeli-Arab solidarity was not, however, long-lasting. The Israeli delegate objected to the Arab and European "automatic majorities", which "isolate" Israel, and went on to announce his intentions of submitting a decision to withdraw from the Assembly to the Knesseth.
For the main part, the debates (to which we will return) focused on the future of Euromed dialogue, on which almost all those who took the floor, including the president of the EMPA (and President of the European Parliament), Josep Borrell, spoke of results between "light and shade". The debate also focused on the "alliance of civilisations", which everybody spoke out in favour of, and these hopes were comforted by the speech made at the start of the session by Frederico Mayor Saragoza, president of the working group on the UN on bringing the civilisations close together. At the start of the session, Abdelwahed Radi, president of the Moroccan Chamber of Representatives, stressed that the EMPA is the "institutional and Parliamentary translation" of a shared willingness to fight for peace and against "all forms of extremism". He also called for an "end to be put to the Israeli occupation" which, he says, has helped to slow down the Barcelona process.