Brussels, 24/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - The extraordinary summit of the 35 countries of the EU and the Mediterranean basin, which celebrate the 10th anniversary of Euro-Mediterranean partnership in Barcelona on 28 November, is likely to lead to the approval of a code of conduct and a declaration on the fight against terrorism, President Barroso told the press on Thursday, noting: this will be the first time that this has happened "at this level" between Mediterranean partners. "The Arab countries should use this opportunity" to reject the confusion which is sometimes made between terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, said José Manuel Barroso, who added: Barcelona may also be the opportunity for these countries to "distance themselves from the unacceptable comments of the Iranian President about Israel", as the president of the Palestinian Authority already has done. The Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner noted that "this was one of the "most delicate" topics of the summit, and that "we are still in the process of negotiating" this text (a meeting of high-level civil servants will take place on the eve of the summit), and indicated that: we may, for example, reject the whole idea that there may be "safe havens" for terrorists, she said.
Another priority of Barcelona will be the question of immigration: I hope that progress will be made, because we are continuing to experience "tragic humanitarian crises", Mr Barroso warned, reiterating that the national action plans adopted as part of the EU's neighbourhood policy contain many concrete measures in this field (Mr Barroso several times stressed the fact that the neighbourhood policy is a "key priority" of the Commission, which on Wednesday held a "very useful discussion" on this subject, and decided to reinforce it by actively involving all services). These action plans are "an investment in security, for others and for ourselves", added Ms Ferrero-Waldner, referring in particular to the action plans for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The action plan with Morocco, she added, provides 75 million EUR to reinforce border controls, bring the legal system up to date and provide support in case of "population movements".
Why should the doors of accession to the EU be closed to these countries, when a country like Turkey is negotiating its membership? To this question, Mr Barroso replied: "Turkey has a European history, it had an empire in Europe, even though it has an Asian dimension", whereas there are " no plans for the accession of African countries" to the EU. The President of the Commission repeated: this is the very interest in a neighbourhood policy to boost the euro-Mediterranean partnership. "This is a question of working on a broader project. Europe, which was able to bring down the Berlin Wall, has to be capable of building a bridge to the south", said Mr Barroso, who feels that the EU can be proud of the progress it is made in the last 10 years with its partners from the southern Mediterranean (when I took part in meetings with these countries as the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Portugal, he recalled, "the atmosphere was entirely different, there was a certain shyness in us at bringing up certain subjects", and a dismissive attitude on their part, whereas today, "we can discuss the trickiest issues").
i) When asked about the possibility that certain leaders of the partner countries will not be going to Barcelona (as is rumored to be the case of the president of Syria: see EUROPE 9074), Mr Barroso said only that " it is a shame if certain people do not want to come (...). The invitation is from the UK Presidency and the Spanish government, not the Commission (...). Normally, in this such cases, the absent parties are always in the wrong. I call on all parties to join in a frank and open dialogue, even on difficult issues".
The main achievements of the Barcelona process
For Baeza, who has worked closely on the Euromed dossier at the Commission, the holding of this first Euro-Mediterranean Summit is the " recognition of the enormous amount of work, which has not always been visible, carried out over the last decade of the life of the process, by the services of the Commission". Within the European institutions, the Member States and Mediterranean partners, the hundreds of civil servants who have been tasked with this dossier have worked to give it content and, if we include civil society, research institutions, various sectorial networks (water, energy, transport, rural development, health care, etc), thousands of people have been involved.
Ten years ago, the signatory countries of the Barcelona declaration, taking advantage of the favourable context of the Oslo agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, pledged to act together to make the Mediterranean into a "area of peace and shared prosperity", and to create a free-trade zone by 2010.
This liberalisation of trade, which has been North-South, should be added to by South-South free-trade agreements and should lead to the "largest free-trade zone in the world" (see EUROPE 9069 on the subject of free trade in agriculture, and A Look behind the News 9073 and 9074). This multilateral perspective on trade should also be accompanied by the pooling of all challenges faced by the region (political and security, economic development, human and social development), in the hope of reaching common and, more importantly, concerted solutions. This is what led to important decisions in the field of maritime transport, the networking of maritime freight transport resources together with the same process, which is in full flow, for energy networks (gas, electricity), in a region which owns many resources which are necessary to the European economy. In the field of trade, apart from a real, but still insufficient development of trade marked by a persistent deficit to the detriment of the partners of the EU, important decisions have been taken this year (rules of origin). These relative successes in the economic plank contrast with the vacillations which have marked the political and security plank. Thus the draft charter in these fields has been shelved, and the only notable concrete result is the creation of a network of defence institutes, Euromesco (whose analyses are now used as reference, as are those of Femise, a network of institutes carrying out analysis on the field of economics). One issue which was the subject of heated debate on the political plank is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has slowed down the progress of the Barcelona process, although the countries in question agree that this is not the appropriate forum to seek solutions for this conflict. However, within the framework of Barcelona, a certain amount of dialogue has been noted and the EU can rightly boast that it has been able to bring together Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese around the same table. Other obstacles relate to relations with Syria and, for different reasons, with Libya, a potential participant in the process, but which is happy, for the time being, with its status as observer. The third chapter- human, social and cultural matters and immigration- has, for 10 years, been the poor relation of the process: the initial projects were abandoned, but various timely actions or those responding to requests from civil society had been carried out, the most notable of which led to the creation of the Anna Lindh foundation for a dialogue of the cultures. The summit is also set to obtain important results on the "migration" dossier.