Malta and Sarkozy's plan for the Mediterranean

Years of experience have taught the public not to give all that much importance or credibility to vague promises and attractive plans made by many politicians during election campaigns. It is well known that after an election, when all is said and done, a lot more is said than will ever be done.

No wonder many French electors, and also other Europeans, did not give much importance to one particular plan announced by Nicolas Sarkozy during the presidential election campaign in France. This proposal was made in a campaign speech, in February, in Toulon. Mr Sarkozy said: "The Mediterranean is a key to our influence in the world. It's also a key for Islam that is torn between modernity and fundamentalism".

In reality, Mr Sarkozy's initiative in his February campaign speech went largely unnoticed in Europe, until he repeated it on TV and media in his electoral victory address on the evening of Sunday, May 6.

In this short but important first speech as President-elect he stated: "The time has come to build together a Mediterranean Union that will be the bridge between Europe and Africa".

What the new French President has in mind is to gather the European, Middle Eastern, and North African countries of the strategic Mediterranean area into an economic community, more or less, in the lines of the early European Union.

In his victory speech Mr Sarkozy said he wants the countries ringing the Mediterranean - Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco - to form a council and hold regular meetings under a rotating presidency. As Mr Sarkozy's aides have said, while plans are still being drawn up, at the early stage, the proposal has been taken seriously by many of the nations that would be very much interested in the French President's plan. Malta welcomes it with much enthusiasm.

In his election speech in Toulon Mr Sarkozy had said that a Mediterranean Union would work closely with the EU and might eventually form a joint institution with the 27-nation bloc. But it would definitely be a separate organisation.

The idea of a Mediterranean dialogue is not new. In 1995 the EU launched the so-called Barcelona Process, a structure for regular meetings among the Union's members and other Mediterranean countries". But Mr Sarkozy's initiative is different, as his plan involves exclusively those countries with an immediate coastline and interest in closer co-operation. As one French diplomat put it: "Germany cares about the East, we care about the South. That would not stop either of us from taking targeted initiatives".

As The International Herald Tribune (May 11) puts it: "Sarkozy wants to anchor regional co-operation in the fields of energy, security, counter-terrorism and immigration on a trade agreement, and create a Mediterranean Investment Bank, modelled on the European Investment Bank, that would help develop the economies on the eastern and southern edge of the region. He has offered French expertise on nuclear energy in return for access to North Africa's gas reserves."

As Mr Sarkozy said in his victory speech: "The time has come to build a Mediterranean Union that will be the bridge between Europe and Africa". Malta will support this innovative plan.