The sea of contacts

The history of Euro-Mediterranean relations under many aspects resembles the history of missed opportunities. In 1995, the year when the so-called ‘Euromed’ Barcellona Process was created, a number of ambitions and expectations were generated which had broad political, economic and cultural bearing. The new era of cooperation between the European Union and the twelve Countries of the Southern shore of the Mediterranean – conspicuously financed by the Meda programs managed by Brussels in cooperation with local authorities of the recipient Countries – was aimed at turning development, trade, education, democratization and intercultural dialogue into the countersigns of the recovered pax mediterranea .In 2008, despite these countersigns have remained the same, present reality doesn’t correspond to previous expectations. Causes (faults?) ought to be ascribed to both partners . As relates to the Community reasons are to be found in: problematic and never univocal foreign policies, excessive attention to Eastern Europe’s enlargement, poor cooperation programs management. On the other hand, the African and Middle-Eastern side, is marked by institutional instability, poor ability to curb illegal immigration, unceasing regional conflicts. Given these conditions, the flop of Meda programs was unavoidable: the money went lost and the ‘flame’ of dialogue’ diminished. Nobody can deny, however, that for a series of different reasons both of geopolitical and of cultural-religious nature, the Barcelona Process, has had the great merit of bringing government and population representatives around the same table. These were the same parties who had previously strictly limited contacts owing to ‘democratically correct’ approaches carried out at bilateral level and only occasionally. It would be equally wrong to deny the European Union’s noble attempt to bring the North and Southern regions closer, based on the principle that “Sea does not divide, it unites”. Europe must equally be acknowledged as the founder of a new generation of association, cooperation and free trade agreements bound to clearly regulated commitments endorsed by the aids’ final recipients. Nonetheless, Euromed never took off the ground. Periodical governmental and parliamentary reunions, accompanied by strong statements, were rarely followed by concrete action. The effort thus turned out to be insufficient: one thing is to make the container available, another is to find the content. However, the world has undergone rapid changes in the course of the past decade. Europe understood that also Euro-Mediterranean cooperation has to change quickly – and to the better. This was mostly understood by the coastal Countries, true actors of partnership. It is not by chance that – during the electoral campaign for France’s presidential elections – in October last year, Nicolas Sarkozy launched from Morocco the proposal of creating the Euro-Mediterranean Union. According to the initial intentions of the present French president, the project should have seen the participation of States and Peoples bordering on the Mediterranean. It is understandable that North and East European Countries reacted negatively or took a distance (Angela Merkel’s Germany was on the forefront). The point was that unless all Member States participate, it’s as good as over. This is true to the extent that debate on this issue was erased from the agenda of the Spring European Council. France, Italy, Spain and Greece didn’t play hard to get, and aligned. The Euro-Mediterranean Union is now a joint proposal of all Member States which will be debated during the next EU summit at the end of June and which will be the object of a meeting between the heads of government and state of all Euromed Countries scheduled for next July 13 in Paris under the French presidency. This is certainly a positive proposal, since it reposes on the assumption that only common and permanent institutions are capable of creating alliances, which are also common and permanent, in order to eventually manage and improve them. Specularly, this is what has successfully happened for the European Communities. We believe this to be true. Binding the national and local authorities of the two parties into planning and managing together development programs and policies means creating a single unit from the Baltic region to the Maghreb, from Portugal to Palestine, whereby the Mediterranean (its coasts and islands), would be called to play its ancient and long-time neglected pivotal role of the Sea of trade and contacts, to the benefit of the dialogue and peace of its peoples, today and especially tomorrow.