Mr Guaino and a question of rhetoric. Everyone knows that the activities of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) are practically at a standstill but this doesn't mean that the process for taking positions, making declarations or developing programmes is slowing down in any way. On the contrary, the less action taken, the more we talk about it. It is quite understandable that the founding father of the project, Henri Guaino, is the most active defender of the project's validity and future. His understanding of dialectics and historical knowledge are without reproach and the result of his work is both welcome and culturally very rich. He considers that the UfM in itself represents a historic advance because it creates a parity between participants that “many bureaucrats and diplomats” are unable to even conceive of. He affirms that he is “determined” to “fight till the end against shallow minds” that doubt the validity of the project and explains that “those who are responsible for the failure of the Barcelona process are the least suited for teaching anyone any lessons”. Guaino also announced a “strong political initiative for relaunching the process” (EUROPE 9898). His “relaunch speech” (published in full in the on-line MedAfrique.info, together with responses to it) is also full of fervour and he states that the stakes in the Mediterranean are “crucial for the future of a certain idea of mankind and civilisation”. He does not, however, have a single word to say about the fundamental reasons why his project is blocked and which make it completely unfeasible in the current circumstances (which are not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, far from it).
Everyone for themselves. Mr Guaino's text has provoked a number of reactions which appear to me to also be very far off the mark from shedding light on the causes of the failure and what might be necessary to get the UfM up and running. Most commentaries give the impression that they are defending their own specific or sectional interests (and in the majority of cases sign their articles using pseudonyms to avoid having any problems).
In addition to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly and conveniently used to justify all the different blockages, we also notice that: a) European civil servants deny their responsibility for the claimed failure of the Barcelona process and point out that Mr Guaino is a “dyed-in-the-wool sovereignist who can't bear a Community Europe and for whom everything that comes out of Brussels should be thrown out”; b) from the other side of the trenches comes an accusation of Europe's inefficiency and weakness: “What does the Europe whose marriage to the Mediterranean we seek, represent? It is in crisis, riven by doubt, obsessed by the potential threat of Islam”; c) other writers create the impression that everything would work if they set up a UfM secretariat with real political powers (in Brussels, according to certain pundits because it is the centre of European activity or anywhere but Brussels if others are to be believed, because it is necessary to escape the suffocating hold exercised by the Community bureaucracy). This concern with a secretariat appears to suggest that for many candidates, this is indeed the main concern. It is also common knowledge that the most ferocious negotiations so far, have focused on the additional bureaucracy needed to create the secretariat and finance it; d) a certain Mr Armand Imbert mocked the way in which Mr Guaino basks himself in glory for having launched an initiative on which he believes the future of world civilisation depends (“Zorro has arrived!”) and a Mr Halim Serradj draws up a list of problems that the UfM has caused: it has wiped out the achievements of the Barcelona process, it has paralysed the European Commission, demoralised the most loyal activists, given free-range to the most pathological of presidency ambitions and other permanent roles, created institutional disorder and has pushed back the geographical limitations defined in the Barcelona process to take on board the “accession failures”.
What's blocking and what's working. Praise for Mr Guaino's “passionate commitment and sincere ambition” (Salem Fourati) is not exactly short on the ground, with a number of compliments about the “remarkable richness” of the descriptive adjectives Mr Guaino employs. I have not, however, found a single concrete suggestion or attempt to analyse the current blockage that goes beyond the constant mention of the Palestinian question or the vague demand to extract “the project from the complex bureaucratic and technocratic structures”. A laconically academic analysis by F. Robert and another by Basseri Triki mention some of the aspects pertaining to the essential reasons why the project as it currently stands has no future.
This obviously does not mean that everything is negative on the ground - on the contrary, concrete projects and positive initiatives are being developed. Euro-Mediterranean cooperation on some projects is making progress. It is the structure of the Union for the Mediterranean as it stands that is blocked and which is devoid of perspective. This column will attempt to indicate the causes for this at the beginning of next week. (F.R./transl.rh)