The southern neighbours

The Euro-Mediterranean partnership should engage more countries than just France and Spain, writes Toby Vogel.

Nicolas Sarkozy, on the night that he was elected president of France in May, took up an idea that he had floated months earlier of a "Mediterranean Union that will bridge Europe and Africa". "What was done for Europe 60 years ago, we will do today for a Mediterranean Union," he told the cheering crowd.

The idea had not found much resonance when Sarkozy first raised it. But on election night, backed by the gravitas of Sarkozy’s new office and the palpable sense of change - la rupture - which the candidate was so good at conveying, it forced policymakers around the Mediterranean and in Brussels to take a hard look at the relationship between the EU and its neighbours on the other side of the Mediterranean.

The strongest reactions came from Ankara, where Sarkozy’s proposal was seen as a continuation of his efforts to keep Turkey out of the EU regardless of whether the country met the conditions for membership. The Turks fear that even countries that might qualify for membership will languish indefinitely in some sort of associate status. Sarkozy’s suggestion did nothing to reassure them. They will accept the Mediterranean Union only if it is not an alternative to full membership of the EU.

But the other countries of a region that takes in the Maghreb and the Levant know that membership of the EU is not on offer for them and that Turkey’s position - its claim to Europeanness - is unique. They welcomed Sarkozy’s initiative as they welcomed the existing mechanism that links them to the EU, the Euro-Mediterranean partnership (Euromed), also known as the Barcelona Process.

In EU circles, Sarkozy’s idea, which he has not been pursuing with his usual energy since assuming office, caused a stir because it seemed to suggest that the Euromed partnership was not producing the results it was set up to achieve. The key difference between Euromed and Sarkozy’s scheme was that he was only including those EU countries with a coastline on the Mediterranean. But as this survey shows, the challenges emanating from the region - authoritarian government boosted by energy revenues, migration flows driven by economic underdevelopment, religious fanaticism and so on - are not simply a Spanish or French problem, but engage the EU as a whole. This would suggest that an EU-wide response is needed.

The Euro-Mediterranean partnership should engage more countries than just France and Spain, writes Toby Vogel.