By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Nov 10 2000 (IPS)

The programme of economic co-operation between the European Union (EU) and its neighbouring states at the eastern and southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, is being jeopardised by the renewed conflict between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, according to observers.

Known as the Barcelona Process, consultations on the programme are expected to continue next week with a ministerial gathering in the French city of Marseille.

The meeting, scheduled for Nov 15-16, was set to assemble for the fifth time since 1995 the foreign ministers of all the 15 EU member states and their counterparts from 13 Mediterranean countries.

But diplomatic representatives of Syria and Lebanon, especially Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara, suggested this week, that their governments would boycott the meeting in Marseille to protest against the participation of Israel.

Apart from the 15 EU member states, all the Mediterranean states, including Turkey, Malta, Cyprus, Jordan, the Palestinian National Authority and Israel comprise the Barcelona process.

This Euro-Mediterranean project has been, up to now, one of the rare forums, where a dialogue between the Arab states and Israel still was possible.

The government of Libya, which in the past has been seen by Western states as a fomenter of terrorism, is also a party to the process, although only since early this year and with the low-profile status of a special guest.

Syrian and Lebanon governments also urged their Arab counterparts to act in accordance with the recommendations of the Arab summit six weeks ago, and stop all multilateral relations with Israel.

According to the French media, the Palestinian National Authority indicated that its representatives would not participate in the fifth Euro-Mediterranean meeting.

The boycott would also be in response to the apathy shown so far by the European Union in facing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.

Both sides have been caught up in a wave of violence since September 28, in the autonomous Palestinian territories as well as in Israel.

In the view of Arab observers, the European Union has failed to intervene in an active way in the Middle East conflict, and has handed down the major Western role in the region to the government of the United States.

This Arab view was confirmed during the Middle East visit of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany 10 days ago. Schroeder repeatedly pointed out that neither his government nor the European Union intend to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An official of the Foreign Ministry in Paris, who did not want to be named, maintained however that the meeting “at the ministerial level” will take place in Marseille next week, and denied any knowledge of a possible Arab boycott.

Countries such as Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt had confirmed the presence of their representatives in Marseille, the official said.

France currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and as such organises all European official diplomatic activities.

The project of economic Mediterranean partnership began with the regional summit celebrated in 1995 in the Catalonian city of Barcelona and is considered by the European Union as strategical.

After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the secession wars in former Yugoslavia, the Mediterranean basin is the last European border crying for security.

However, the process of Barcelona has as yet not satisfied the economic expectations it arose five years ago.

At its beginning, this co-operation process, inspired by the EU, was intended to promote economic development in the south-eastern Mediterranean coast, with the aim of improving security conditions in the area and of reducing the illegal migration from Northern Africa to Western Europe.

To this end, the EU set an aid program, known as MEDA, with a budget of 3,5 billion Euros, some 3 billion US dollars, for the period between 1995 and 1999.

The EU and the Mediterranean countries also plan to build a regional free trade zone by the year 2010. The EU also allocated two billion Euros (1,8 billion US dollars) for other aid programmes for the five-year period up to 1999.

But the EU’s inherent difficulties, such as over-regulation and personal shortages, have blocked the co-operation.

According to official EU figures, only 26 percent of the MEDA funds were actually spent. A French government official said, “most of the MEDA projects are nothing more than paper and dry ink”.

The European aid programs for the Mediterranean basin that best rate, are those targeted at Palestinian autonomous areas. They reach an implementation rate of 48 percent, a remarkable figure compared to the 4 percent achieved by Turkey and 0,5 percent by Lebanon.

The European Commission recognised last May its inefficiency in managing the aid programs for the Mediterranean region.

Chris Patten, European Commissioner for Foreign Relations, said, the EU “has a extremely bad reputation, as far as our promises of economic co-operation are concerned. We cannot continue acting like this, such inefficiency shows dishonesty and incompetence.”

But Patten also argued that the inefficiency of the European Commission arises from the volume of aid it has to manage, from its understaffed personnel, and from the complexity of its procedures.

In order to improve the programme’s implementation, the EU has being planning a drastic reform of the processes.

The failures of the MEDA projects have not discouraged the EU.

The European Commission in Brussels has set a new budget for the so-called MEDA II programs, for the period up to the year 2006. The new budget, that still has to be approved, amounts to 6,7 billion Euros, some 5,8 billion dollars.

Economic development analysts criticise the Barcelona process, not only because it has failed so far to meet the expectations it arose five years ago. But also because the European Union demanded as pre-condition a widely unpopular market-oriented economic transformation in the Mediterranean partners.

Francis Ghiles, member of the Scientific Committee of the Mediterranean Institute in Marseille, says, the MEDA programs demanded a “structural adjustment in countries such as Morocco and Algeria”.

He adds: “Now, those countries hesitate to continue implementing such adjustment, because they fear a popular revolt. And the aid programs, whose precondition the adjustment was, simply do not come true.”

Human rights activists also denounce the European co-operation with Mediterranean countries such as Tunisia as an act of complicity with “regimes that practice torture on daily basis”

Louisa Toscana, member of the Committee to Protect Freedom and Human Rights in Tunisia, said in Paris, “the government of Zine Abidine Ben Ali has during 13 years kept the power in Tunis only through the aid granted by European countries.”

In Tunisia, she added, “Torture is not practised occasionally. It is a routine Democrats must confront every day, it is an instrument to keep society under a reign of terror.”

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