President calls for one-voice Europe

The European Union must have a deeper insight and a better understanding of the Mediterranean if it were to have a meaningful role in the region, President Guido de Marco said yesterday.

As a neo-EU member state, Malta would be in a better position to ensure the proper evaluation and understanding of the Mediterranean world in European affairs and vice-versa, he said.

"For the EU to be able to forge stronger regional relations not only in the Mediterranean, but also elsewhere, it has to emerge as a more influential world actor. To do this, it has to rise to the challenge of a common foreign and security policy..."

He was delivering a lecture on "The Future of Euro-Mediterranean Relations: the Vision of Malta", at the Centre for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany.

"The inability of Europe to speak with one voice and to act in unison on the outset of the Iraqi crisis is a crude reminder of the long way Europe has to become a world leader in security issues," Prof. de Marco said.

He said a council for the Mediterranean could provide the essential parameters to give it the framework that would lead to a solution, just as the creation of the Council of Europe in the immediate post war served as a foundation for the EU.

"What we lack in the Mediterranean and for the Mediterranean are not plans and proposals but political will," the President said.

Speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Prof. de Marco said: "It is a grave mistake to use terrorism as a justification for the military occupation of Palestinian territory for the existence and continued expansion of Jewish settlements on Arab land..." He said that isolating Yasser Arafat and putting the sole blame for the failure of the Road Map on Palestinian terrorism was not a realistic approach to solving the issue.

"It is here that the EU can provide its determined weight against a crisis in frustration, which, in its process of escalation, can envelop the whole Mediterranean region and beyond." After the lecture, Prof. de Marco was presented with the Stresemann-Gesellschaft Gold Medal for 2005 for his role in EU integration. Former recipients include Vaclav Havel and Edward Heath.