Union for the Mediterranean: how realistic an exercise in foresight?

Citation

Richardson, J. (2009), "Union for the Mediterranean: how realistic an exercise in foresight?", Foresight, Vol. 11 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2009.27311baa.001

Union for the Mediterranean: how realistic an exercise in foresight?

Article Type: Editorial From: foresight, Volume 11, Issue 2

[La Méditerranée, c’est] non pas un paysage, mais d’innombrables paysages. Non pas une mer, mais une succession de mers. Non pas une civilisation, mais plusieurs civilisations.

[The Mediterranean is] not a landscape, but countless landscapes. Not a sea, but a succession of seas. Nor a civilization, but several civilizations.) (Historian Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée).

A long-term concept originating some two decades ago and reinforced in 1995 by the European Union’s (EU’s) unsuccessful Barcelona Process, the notion of a Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) beguiled Nicolas Sarkozy during his campaign for the French presidency. He announced (February 2007) a scheme to ally the Mediterranean’s developing southern shore with the industrialized northern coast. By July 2008 he convened – as both president of his country and rotating president of the EU – a founding, multi-nation organizing summit in Paris. (The conference was disregarded by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.)

Sarkozy’s motivations were partly:

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  to harmonize the relationships of all the surrounding maritime nations with their common ocean resource;

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  to refuse Turkey’s bid to join the EU;

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  to help resurrect France’s historic position as a mentor of Islamic territories in northern Africa and the Levant; and

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  in Sarkozy’s words“to make way for great dreams of peace and civilization”.

Thus the project came to entail foresight, together with precaution, multifaceted diplomatic maneuver, economic negotiation, and along the way not a few hindrances and pitfalls. Farsighted yet complex, clear in its publicized intentions, the project must be seen from its outset as one fraught with potential failure. Perhaps more guardedly, in the words of the Parisian daily Le Monde (Nougayrède and Ricard, 2008), the plan of an UfM “conjoins uncertainty with ambition”.

Background

The between-the-continents water that the ancient Romans called their own today washes 22 countries. They extend from the Straits of Gibraltar east to Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestine[1]. While not all these states are industrialized or parliamentary in character, they represent a civilizational mix of the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition and the younger Islamic faith. This is to say that they are all Abrahamic in cultural derivation. This megaculture counts, for instance, 600 television channels and at least 150 million internet subscribers. Gastronomically, their palm oil or olive oil diet contrasts with the predominantly butter diet of the more northerly nations.

Environmentally speaking, the region is less fertile than countries farther north or farther south on the Eastern Hemisphere’s two landmasses. Furthermore, from Morocco to Turkey-Syria, the area has helped make up falling birthrates of native Europeans north of the Mediterranean – sending, since the late 1950s, a steady flow of economic emigrants to the lands now comprising the EU. The continuing migrations, chiefly from Muslim areas, have found homes especially in France, Germany, Italy and Spain; in France, these movements have made the population today probably one-tenth Muslim (probably, because French law prohibits census-takers from asking a citizen his or her religious preference).

Until 2008 the Mediterranean zone was the only world region without a politico-economic association of some sort (in marked contrast with the EU, NAFTA, the African Union or ASEAN). The Mediterranean Sea’s littoral States supply food and provide transport, whether for commerce (including investment) or migration or pleasure. Its waters suffer marine pollution of variable extent, contamination coming largely from the 60 principal cities dumping their wastewater there. (Cairo, with its 18 million population, is nine times greater than it was 50 years ago.) And people living on the southern coast have an income of only about one-twelfth of those residing on the northern shore (Box 1).

Imposing current realities on the future

In the world of 2008 the EU has a population of 495 million against 212 million for the band of nations extending from Morocco/Western Sahara to Turkey; this arc includes Mauritania, the Palestinian territories, Israel, as well as Jordan and Syria. Since the late 1950s the southern periphery of the Mediterranean has supplied about 8 million emigrants to what is now the EU. International trade between north and south remains in marked imbalance, with only 10 percent of the EU’s exports bound southwards while the south sends 46 percent of its product northwards. Commerce between the two sides of the Mediterranean has grown consistently, however, during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Politico-military conflicts are not unknown in the region. The status of the Western Sahara (for which claims by both Morocco and Algeria are still not settled) shares longevity with face-off between Palestine.

Israel

The continued gravity of this dispute could hold the UfM hostage to effective implementation; and, although armed conflict between the two halves on Cyprus is at present in abeyance, efforts at resolution of the status of that area continue. Turkey, therefore, awaits – possibly until 2015, or even later – definite consent from the EU for official membership, a delay that could have a bearing on Turkey’s active partnership within the UfM. Libya, despite its turnabout several years ago as a “nuclearizing” State of the time, is withholding further activity with the UfM. Syria, at crossed swords with Lebanon for some years now, was present at the organizing summit called by President Sarkozy on July 13, 2008; the extent of Syria’s full participation in UfM activities later is somewhat clouded (see Table I). The future status of Jordan as a potential UfM member remains, furthermore, unclear (Box 2).

Illegal immigration, via the boat people using principally Tunisia and Morocco as staging areas to sail surreptitiously towards mainly Italy and Spain, is a point of contention across the Mediterranean – much as are the Hispanic immigrants making their way from Mexico to the USA and Canada. Public opinion, in both geographic zones, deplores human contraband, but economic realities on both northern continents make employment of illegal immigrants attractive.

Quite probably, only direct investment by north into south (joint ventures, start-ups, support for small and medium businesses, increased development aid) will dilute or thwart the ardor of the would-be illegal immigrants. In the case of educated migrants, such efforts might help reverse a critical brain-drain that has endured since decolonization began in the 1960s.

The “Club Med” has competition

In 2003 the respected Club of Rome, a worldwide think tank, founded an ambitious programme called TREC to make the deserts provide water and electricity. The abbreviation stands for Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation, a 60-member group of political figures, scientists and development experts headed by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. Their objective is to convince both governments and private investors of the advantages of cooperative use of aeolian and solar energy. There is more on this project at www.desertec.org

A somewhat related effort, concentrating more on the total periphery of the Mediterranean and undertaken within the context of the UN, is explained in Box 3.

Now, to make the future happen

Northern objections to the Sarkozy plan, coming mainly from Germany, Poland and Denmark, were at first serious obstacles to proceeding with Sarkozy’s UfM ideas. So as the EU’s incoming president, Sarkozy convened all leaders of the Union’s 27 nations, together with the chiefs of the Mediterranean Sea’s surrounding States for a parley on Sunday, July 13 2008. Boycotted by Libya, the conference brought into the same room the Syrian president and Israel’s prime minister. Although the two leaders neither shook hands nor dialogued, their presence together was a “first”. The conferees joined President Sarkozy the following day at a garden party for 8,000 invitees at an official mansion of the French leader, and many stayed for a special fireworks display to mark the French revolutionary holiday of July 14. The festivities proved to be a spectacular occasion, redounding personally on Mr Sarkozy.

Yet his project of a Union for the Mediterranean risks, rather clearly, becoming a case of optimism of the will evolving into pessimism of the real. This is the main risk confronting a nascent UfM. The immediate achievements have included, it is true, the release of Israeli-held prisoners to help smooth the way for better relations with the Palestine Authority. And, for the first time in 65 years, Syria committed itself to beginning normal relations with Lebanon.

The UfM will be chaired by co-presidents, beginning with Sarkozy and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, launching regular meetings from November 2008. Funding and – indeed, other means – are currently non-existent; but because the principals foresee much interest on the part of the world of commerce, private cash may be forthcoming – including sovereign funding from one or more of the oil-rich emirates. This aspect of the new, 43-country UfM thus remains provisional. “So the success of the inaugural summit”, observed The Independent’s John Litchfield, “suggests the new ‘Club Med’ – dismissed by some as just another talking shop – might finally allow Europe to become a serious player in the game of Middle East peace” (Litchfield, 2008).

Roger Cohen, commentator of The New York Times, joined the numerous observers of Turkey’s anomalous position when he summarized the budding of the UfM:

Thinking big and excluding Turkey from the EU is oxymoronic… The Union for the Mediterranean is a near-empty shell but an important impulse for Europe to think big … (Cohen, 2008).

Both chroniclers are probably right.

Notes

1. Although not washed by the Mediterranean’s water, Jordan, Mauritania and Portugal have all expressed a strong desire to be admitted to the UfM.

Jacques RichardsonMember of foresight’s editorial board.