From mistrust to trust” “” “

The journalist Olivier Morin reviews relations between the European Union and the Mediterranean countries and suggests some future approaches. The Barcelona declaration, signed between members of the EU and the ten partners of the South and East of the Mediterranean, is the founding document of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership (EMP). It is aimed at the construction of a shared zone of peace, prosperity and stability. “The originality of the EMP”, says Olivier Morin, writing in the February number of the monthly Études, “consists in its ‘holistic’ philosophy: it is a contract of political nature that defines very diversified objectives, forming a coherent but very wide-ranging whole. It is multifunctional: and it’s ambitions, but also its admitted ambiguities in organization and implementation, consist precisely in that. A REVIEW OF PROGRESS SO FAR: “The EMP was born in Barcelona ten years ago: in hindsight, it can be argued that this birth was based on a misunderstanding”, on diverging hopes and interests between the two partners. On the one hand, the objectives for the European Union were: “to secure its southern frontiers, a hotbed of conflicts; prevent the economic loss of the south-eastern zone of the Mediterranean which would be fatal for its economy; control the demographic explosion of the Maghreb and the Mashrek which would fuel clandestine immigration; and ensure the promotion of its own political and moral values”. On the other hand, the partners of the South have off-loaded onto Europe the task of their own internal problems, “thinking that the European funds linked to EMP would lead to sufficient prosperity to be able to make structural and political reforms”. At their meeting at La Haye, ten years after Barcelona, the partners drew up a chequered balance sheet of the venture. Undeniably the EMP “has permitted significant progress in terms of cooperation, with ever more effective structures put in place: Anna Lindh Foundation for dialogue between cultures, Euro-Med Parliamentary Assembly, Euro-Med Facility for Investment and Partnership (FEMIP), European Aid Funds (MEDA)… But a lot still needs to be done to lubricate the rather complicated Brussels machine”. THE DIFFICULTIES. “The whole of European policy rests on a subtle balance between the interventions of the Council, Commission and Parliament: each institutional player is engaged in increasing or preserving its own prerogatives from encroachments by the other two”. Now the three pillars of the EMP each fall under the remit of one of the three European players, to which are added the bilateral relations existing between some European countries and their former colonies; all this generates diplomatic and bureaucratic “spasms”. And indeed “it is especially the institutional organization of the EMP that is stigmatised by the Southern partners that have difficulty in understanding how it works”. Apart from this, in the first phase of the programme the funding arrangements (MEDA I) were so burdened at the bureaucratic level that only 28% of the funds were actually spent. Only with the launch of MEDA II in 2000 did things improve. For their part, the countries of the South during the first phase were shown to be lacking in “a south-to-south dialogue”, indispensable precondition for the growth of the region. PROSPECTS OF REVIVAL. Undoubtedly the New neighbourhood policy for an enlarged Europe, launched by the European Commission (March 2003), has created good conditions for the revival of the EMP, opening up new possibilities to the neighbouring countries in terms of freedom of circulation of persons, goods, services and capital: “it is the response of the Union to the anxieties of its neighbours after the enlargement to 25. Besides, enlargement would be checked if its immediate neighbours did not benefit from its peace, prosperity, security and stability”. The author further suggests some approaches: relying more on the EMP to “put an end to the conflicts that are poisoning the region”, while allowing the Union finally to emerge as “a decisive mediator”; negotiating “a Euro-Med treaty, with the objective of creating permanent institutions”; “integrating its own partners in decision making”; giving “visibility to the process”, so that “the countries of the South may affirm their wish for Europe and those of the North indicate that rapprochement is a chance for them, in spite of the cultural fears”; and especially returning to the spirit of Barcelona, which “was not a hasty response to an acute crisis” – which would only later explode on 11 September 2001 – “but an attempt to treat long-term factors of crisis in a serene way”: “the relation of trust and not mistrust” thus needs to be restored.