G8 leaders folded up their tents last week, trekked back to their capitals and turned their backs on the nth meeting of what is increasingly being seen as an irrelevance. There has been mock horror at the sight of the representatives of the world's wealthiest nations sitting down to a sumptuous dinner; as if eating a sandwich instead would have made the slightest difference to the millions of poor people who have to do without even that. Only creative policy and ethical approaches will feed hungry mouths; neither was forthcoming in Japan.

For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the end of that meeting signalled the start of the French Presidency of the EU and a gathering of EU and Mediterranean countries in Paris this weekend in connection with his Mediterranean Union project. They will be attempting to flesh out what is now being called a Union of the Mediterranean (UOM).

Will this new attempt at bridging the Mediterranean be any more successful than the Barcelona Process, launched more than a decade ago? The UOM, of course, is a direct progeny of that process but there is a growing feeling that any union must base itself, initially at least, on the economic facts on the ground.

These provide ample evidence of a growing prosperity reaching from Morocco to Turkey, a prosperity helped by massive foreign direct investment (FDI) and marred, except in countries like Israel, by very poor infrastructures and an uneducated workforce.

The first step to be taken this weekend will be the creation of a secretariat - it is being proposed that this will be headed by France and Egypt. But significant progress will be hindered by the realpolitik that plagues the southern and eastern parts of the Sea. Israel is not the darling of the east. Libya continues to drag its feet over the issue of illegal immigration. Palestinian statehood is fraught with problems of a serious nature, not least the division between Fatah and Hamas.

And Turkey, which is seeking membership of the European Union, remains suspicious that its membership of UOM will decrease its chances of joining. Indeed, when Mr Sarkozy first floated the idea of a Union of the Mediterranean it was clear to Turkey, which opened negotiations to join the 27-nation bloc in 2005, that the French President, who is opposed to Turkey's membership of the EU, had precisely this in mind.

The Turkish team will not have taken heart from the fact that Mr Sarkozy's initial plan failed to include the participation of the EU as a whole but concentrated on that of the southern Mediterranean-lapped members of the Union. This ploy was rejected by Angela Merkel. As the leader of a country that makes a massive contribution to EU funds, she was not about to see these siphoned southwards without some form of German control over the shape that the UOM would take.

The Barcelona Process may not be dead in the water but one is justified to argue that Mr Sarkozy more or less hijacked it and, true, it is possible as a result to expect fiction to turn more swiftly into fact. The politics are against this happening at this moment in time but the level of FDI and an effort to raise the standard of education and the infrastructure along the southern Mediterranean militate in its favour.