Frendo addresses Euro-Med ministers in Maltese

Foreign Minister Michael Frendo said yesterday that as long as the EU and its Mediterranean partners shared the common vision of a Euro-Mediterranean region - an area of free trade and investment, of economic and political reform, of greater democratisation and an increasing communality of values - "there is a project to which we are all committed and for which we have to carry on working together".

He was speaking during a Euro-Med ministerial meeting in Luxembourg.

Speaking in Maltese, Dr Frendo listed three aspects of paramount importance in taking forward the Barcelona process, namely the need to strengthen the systems of social security throughout the whole region, the need to carry on working on a structure of collective security as mentioned in the Barcelona Declaration and that the issue of illegal immigration be addressed with vigour.

Dr Frendo said he had chosen to speak in Maltese to illustrate that in the context of Euro-Med, a semitic language which has Arabic at its basis was one of the official languages of the European Union.

He said that diversity in Europe, as diversity in the Euro-Med area, should be seen as a strength and not as a barrier to progress.