A southern vision of the Mediterranean

Euro-Med meetings, I am sometimes told, are often depressing for the participants. Southern Mediterranean representatives follow the proceedings while secretly thinking that all the talk of collaboration is hollow talk. European representatives go through the motions while secretly thinking that they have to do all the running themselves because no concrete policy suggestions are offered, or really followed, by the other side.

I heard the same thing last week in Brussels, where yet another Euro-Med meeting was being held. But then, albeit in a bookshop, I came across a southern vision of what Mediterranean cooperation could be like.

The book was published in France: Algeria, Maghreb: the Mediterranean Wager (edited by Abdi Nourredine and published by the Institut du Monde Arabe) is based on a conference held almost exactly three years ago. The book outlines the functional need for an intense cooperative engagement by North Africa (here taken to be Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and Spain, France and Italy. (Why was Malta excluded? Well, in April 2003 we were still debating whether "partnership" might bring us closer to our neighbours...)

What is driving this vision? A sense of opportunity and a larger sense of threat.

First, there is Algeria's gradual re-emergence on the world stage. When the colloquium was held, the Algerians had not yet voted in a referendum that authorised the state to negotiate a settlement with its militant opposition to bring an end to the violence that had racked the country since 1992. Nor had Algeria yet recorded its first positive signs of fiscal recovery. It has now.

But even in 2003, it was clear that Africa's second-largest country was on the way to resuming a major role in the continent - a role it had filled in the 1960s, as a leader of the non-aligned movement and a supporter of anti-colonial movements in sub-Saharan Africa. This new, southern vision of a Euro-Maghreb area has the cooperation between Algeria and Morocco at its core. (More than one contributor wrings his hands about how the Western Sahara dispute may be solved.)

Second, there is a concern that the EU's enlargement towards the east will distract the Union's attention from the southern Mediterranean - despite the assurances of Romano Prodi when he was still President of the Commission. It would still count as a distraction if the Union only pays attention to the south in security terms - what is being called for here is a truly integrated region, where the sea plays the part not of a separating boundary but a uniting area.

Third, the impact of the last enlargement on the balance of power between France and Germany is noted: France has lost out. But one contributor suggests intriguingly (although the argument requires further substantiation), that France's relative decline in this regard began over a decade earlier: France's weight had been traditionally bolstered by its trade and political links with its former North African (and other) colonies; but in 1991, this argument goes, a process of disengagement began that was to France's detriment. A re-engagement by France, together with Italy and Spain (Malta is left out of the calculations), would strengthen what is here called "maritime Europe" in relation to central and eastern Europe.

Finally, there is a concern that is clearly driven by China's growing role in the world economy. Some 52 per cent of Tunisia's exports to Europe are textile-based; Morocco has a smaller but still significant proportion of such exports. Any European liberalisation of its barriers of trade with China is going to have a significant negative impact on what is already a struggling economy on Europe's southern border.

These four considerations are allied to a cultural perspective that might initially startle many European readers. The vision of a Euro-Maghreb area is informed by a conviction that North Africa is, above all, before being Arab or African, Mediterranean. The Latin heritage is stressed by one author, Hechmi Dhaoui, as being particularly significant. It may be a startling view but it has a manifold European pedigree: it was shared by Hegel and Alcide de Gasperi, for example.

Surprisingly, the contributors undersell their vision. In enumerating what the Maghreb might contribute to the EU, stability, a young working population, energy, an agricultural base and tourism are listed. But the sea, and maritime affairs which are of growing concern to the EU, is hardly mentioned. Perhaps this is because the main models that the contributors keep referring to are other regional organisations, like Mercosur and Asean.

There is a role, here, that Malta might play: one that highlights not the general global economic conditions that call for more regional cooperation and integration, but rather the particularity of our region, which calls for maritime affairs to be given especial consideration.

ranierfsadni@europe.com