Mediterranean Union or neutered talking shop?

The French president first launched his plan in his 2007 election victory speech, proposing a union limited to countries bordering the sea, and invoking grand ambitions "to end all hatreds, to make way for a great dream of peace and a great dream of civilisation."

But almost at once other European nations lined up to voice their various objections to the idea. In particular German Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to a scheme that would call on EU support and funding while locking out Germany, the EU’s biggest funder.

Not surprisingly, other Northern EU member states joined the objectors. So did the newer EU member states, fearful that available assistance funding would be redirected southwards.

Spain feared that the proposed new union would divert attention from the already-existing Barcelona process in which it saw itself as crucial, and which had been set up in 1995 with a very similar remit. And Turkey saw the initiative as an attempt to fob it off with an alternative arrangement to full EU membership.

As a result, when the European Council met in May it effectively diluted the French plan and brought it within the existing EU structures. Renamed ‘Barcelona Process - Union for the Mediterranean’, it would now include all the 27 EU member states as well as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Turkey, Israel, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Monaco and Mauritania.

Instead of an ambitious new and free-standing structure, it was clearly labelled as a relaunch of the existing Barcelona initiative. Originally floated in the days of optimism about the Oslo ‘peace process’, the initiative was generally conceded to have lost impetus along with Oslo, proving unable, for example, to agree on a joint definition of ‘terrorism’.

Nonetheless as talking shops go, ‘Barcelona’ is well established and substantial by comparison with its new adopted offspring. It has its own structures and officials, a budget to which the EU has contributed €16bn since 1995, , and a €2bn annual line of credit from the European Investment Bank..

The new structure by contrast has no source of funding yet identified - a problem already highlighted by Algeria’s President Bouteflika, who was one of a number of Arab leaders in any case hesitant about any involvement in the plan because of the fear that it would imply normalisation of relations with Israel.

"Difficulties will begin with funding," he told APS, the official Algerian news agency. He was "not clear" what resources would be available to fund the new projects because the European Union does not plan any "important financial commitment" for several years. "This attitude raises questions about whether the EU really wants to contribute to bringing southern Mediterranean countries up to speed," he said.

A French diplomat was quoted by Der Spiegel as dismissing these fears. ‘It’s not a problem - the money is there when you go looking for it’. The EU, the World Bank and the Gulf States were airily suggested as possible sources of funding.

Nor are the structures of the new ‘Union’ any clearer than its finances. There will be a ‘joint permanent committee’ based in Brussels to assist in preparing meetings of senior officials, and a ‘Joint Secretariat’ - whose political mandate, as well as the nationality of its Director, is still to be determined. So is its location, variously reported to be Malta, Morocco or Tunisia.

The leaders did unanimously adopt a declaration deciding to work on six "concrete projects." These include:

- cleaning up Mediterranean pollution;

- development of maritime and land highways;

- setting up a joint civil protection programme on prevention and response to disasters.

The Secretariat will also aim to "explore the feasibility, development and creation of a Mediterranean Solar Plan," looking into solar power as an alternative source of energy.

A Euro-Mediterranean University, whose seat will be somewhere in Slovenia, hopes to "contribute to the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Higher Education, Science and Research area."

And a ‘Mediterranean Business Development Initiative’ will support small and medium-sized enterprises.

All of which worthy initiatives, assuming that funding for them is to be found, could easily be organised through existing structures. And the most contentious issue - immigration - was not mentioned at all.

But what of the diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East which were also trumpeted at the launch by the French spin machine? Israeli Premier Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that they had "never been closer to agreement." And at the end of the conference President Sarkozy announced that in an ‘historic’ decision, Syria and Lebanon had agreed to establish diplomatic relations.

The scepticism which greeted both ‘achievements’ at the time has only been confirmed since. The always feeble ‘peace process’ must now surely be on the verge of expiring, as Olmert has fallen in a corruption scandal with Netanyahu his most likely successor.

And Syria’s President Assad’s own words as quoted at the time by French news agency AFP were significantly more cautious. "Our position is that there is no problem with the opening of embassies between Syria and Lebanon … If Lebanon is willing to exchange embassies, we have no objections to doing it" But the two countries must "define the steps to take to arrive at this stage" before mutual recognition, he stressed.

None of this is to say that the inital scepticism of most North African leaders was not well founded. But grand plans for imaginative and even much-needed united continent-wide initiatives are often ship-wrecked by internal national rivalries and suspicions - as Africa itself well knows.

*Stephen Marks is the co-ordinator of the Fahamu China in Africa project.

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