Spain now proposes Mediterranean Union

Spain's foreign minister has proposed a Mediterranean Union, an idea first suggested by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with fully fledged institutions along the lines of the European Union.

"The moment has arrived ... to build a real geopolitical space through the establishment of a Mediterranean Union," Miguel Angel Moratinos wrote in an article in yesterday's El Pais, a prominent Spanish daily.

A union comprising EU states and Mediterranean countries should have a council of heads of state and government that would set strategic policy guidelines, ministerial councils, a Permanent Commission to act as a secretariat, a reinforced parliamentary assembly and even its own bank, he said. "The organization would help the region tackle challenges ranging from environmental issues to immigration."

Moratinos' comments follow a meeting of foreign ministers from Mediterranean EU countries in Slovenia this month, which discussed expanding the existing Barcelona Process of regular meetings between EU member states and Mediterranean states.

The Barcelona Euro-Mediterranean partnership, created in 1995 at the height of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, has been dogged by the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Other obstacles to the declared objectives of promoting political, economic and cultural cooperation, as well as creating a Mediterranean free trade area by 2010, have been agricultural protectionism in southern Europe and the opaque, authoritarian nature of many south Mediterranean governments. Spain tried to stage a first Euro-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona in 2005, but most Arab leaders stayed away.