Tomorrow, 13 July, the 27 heads of state of the European Union (EU) and those of the other 16 countries that together will form the future Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) will meet at the Grand Palais in Paris. The new organisation’s place and date of birth are highly symbolic: its anniversary will coincide with the commemoration of the storming of the Bastille. This is a strong signal of the central role of France within the UfM that Nicolas Sarkozy wished to send, as the father of a project that has since been somewhat altered to meet the demands of France’s European partners.
The initial “Mediterranean Union” project aimed to create a space comprising the 22 countries bordering the Mare Nostrum: in the north, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Malta and Cyprus; in the south, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria; plus three countries with privileged links to the Mediterranean: Portugal, Jordan and Mauritania. Switzerland, which some geographers regard as a Mediterranean country because it is the source of one of the sea’s tributaries, the Rhône, was not associated with the UfM project.
Several EU countries, Germany in particular, opposed the project in its original form, fearing it would affect the construction of the EU. After lengthy exchanges, a new formulation emerged. The EU will be closely involved in the decision-making of what will no longer be a “Mediterranean Union” but a “Union for the Mediterranean”. The nuance is significant: in a few letters it sums up the strength of the bonds uniting the members of the EU and their concern to preserve their strategic interests.
Faced with this robust unity, the countries of the South offer a sorry and pathetic spectacle of fragmentation, divergence and quarrels, as the few meetings held in the South to discuss the UfM project have shown. In the absence of substantive reflection and discussion on the strategic aspects of the question, some leaders engaged in jockeying for position to be named the first “southern co-president” of the UfM, a title apparently given to Hosni Mubarak because, it was said, of his country’s large population and its “good neighbourly” relations with Israel; he will have the privilege of sitting alongside the first “northern co-president”, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The UfM’s promoters say it is a space for exchange and cooperation to strengthen North–South relations and help develop the southern shore of the Mediterranean through concrete projects with a real impact on people.
But the new entity’s critics argue that it would in fact be no more than:
1) A political sham, since it is a union in name only; a genuine union would imply the four freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital.
2) A subtle way of giving Turkey the impression of being associated with Europe without being part of the EU.
3) A move to “bury” for good the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), a moribund process that has suffered from internal contradictions between the regimes of the countries concerned, allegedly fuelled continuously by certain European, notably French, policies.
4) An opportunity to achieve Arab–Israeli normalisation on the cheap, that is, without resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
5) An instrument to impose even more political, cultural and symbolic hegemony on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
6) An unbalanced trading area between an EU with a strong economy and countries with disintegrated economies (a difference of a factor of five on average in GDP per capita), between a group of states governed by the rule of law and countries ruined by despotism and corruption, offering a market for the surplus products the EU cannot sell in America and Asia: military and industrial hardware, and food and pharmaceutical products often at or near their expiry date.
7) A reservoir of cheap labour and a place to relocate polluting European industries.
8) A flexible structure to secure Europe’s energy supplies (hydrocarbons and solar) and to control migration flows.
9) An alliance offering a strategic advantage in the struggle for influence waged by the EU, the United States and China in North Africa.
10) A factor consolidating the dictatorships of Arab countries, partners in the so-called “war on terror”, and preventing any inclination towards change in the societies of the South.
Between the predictions of one side and the other, what role will the UfM play in the region? Only the future will tell.
Abbas Aroua, 12 July 2008
