EU hopes to open talks with Libya

The European Commission will on Wednesday (27 February) discuss draft mandates for talks with Libya in the hope of opening negotiations on a framework agreement in a few months.

Libya is seeking closer ties with the EU as part of its policy of opening up to the outside world after almost two decades of international isolation and United Nations sanctions.

In turn the EU is hoping to strengthen its position in North Africa as it seeks to diversify its energy supply. It also wishes to get the co-operation of North African countries in combating illegal migration to Europe.

A framework agreement to govern EU-Libya relations could open the prospect of Libya's membership of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the EuroMed Partnership, of which Libya has been an observer since 1999.

According to an EU diplomat, it is unclear which form Libya would like its relations with the EU to take. Both the ENP and EuroMed, also known as the Barcelona process, include human rights and good governance provisions which may be unpalatable to Libya's authoritarian government.

The Commission was asked by EU member states in October 2007 to draft negotiating directives for an EU-Libya framework agreement following an initial memorandum of understanding in July. Once the Commission agrees the mandate, it will also have to be adopted by member states.

Main agenda points in the negotiations are expected to include fisheries, economic co-operation, migration and education, but also energy and regional issues. Libya has for some time been a key player in neighbouring Chad, where one of the EU's most ambitious peacekeeping operations is under way.

The UN imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 because of its refusal to co-operate with an investigation into the terrorist bombing of a PanAm airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The sanctions were lifted in 2003, after Libya's leader Muammar Qaddafi publicly renounced terrorism and began co-operating with the Lockerbie investigation, but relations with the West remained tense after Libya in 2004 convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of deliberately spreading Aids. Their release in July made the current thaw possible.

The first state visit by Qaddafi since the end of UN sanctions was to Paris, last December. Libya's foreign minister also travelled to Washington, DC, in January to meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the first such visit in 36 years.

The European Commission will on Wednesday (27 February) discuss draft mandates for talks with Libya in the hope of opening negotiations on a framework agreement in a few months.