This WEEK in the European Union
ELITSA VUCHEVA, EUobserver, 04.07.2008 @ 15:34 CET

EUOBSERVER / AGENDA (6 – 13 July) – Next week will be marked by the launch of the EU’s Union for the Mediterranean, as well as by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s presentation in the European Parliament of his priorities for France’s six-month EU presidency.

The Mediterranean Union was proposed by France last year to boost ties with the EU’s southern neighbours, and its official launch is planned to take place during a summit in Paris on Sunday (13 July).

The launch of the Mediterranean Union in Paris is expected to be one of the cornerstones of the French EU presidency. (Photo: French presidency of the EU)

It is a major project of the French presidency and the brainchild of Mr Sarkozy – but its initial version was met with opposition by some member states and was eventually watered down.
The Mediterranean Union (officially: “Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean”) is still seen with scepticism by many analysts.

Additionally, it is not yet clear who exactly will attend the Paris summit on Sunday.

Leaders of all 27 EU members, plus 17 Mediterranean states, have been invited to the event, but some countries, including Algeria and Turkey, have still to decide whether they will accept the invitation or not. Meanwhile Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who has spoken out strongly against the idea, has said he would not go.

Before hosting the launch of the project and the celebrations in Paris, Mr Sarkozy will pass by Strasbourg on Thursday (10 July), where he will present the priorities of his country’s EU presidency to MEPs gathered for their monthly plenary session.

Parliament plenary in Strasbourg

The deputies will also host European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet on Wednesday (9 July) for a debate on the parliament’s annual report on the ECB, following the bank’s decision to raise interest rates and in a global context of rising prices.

On Wednesday, MEPs will also debate and vote on a report on the EU’s future enlargement strategy, stressing that the bloc’s own capacity to absorb new states should be taken into account when considering membership applications in the future.

The report - which also says the EU will respect the commitments it has already taken, was approved by MEPs in the parliament’s foreign affairs committee on 24 June.

Other issues on the parliamentarians’ agenda will include a first-reading vote on the EU’s energy package, in particular on the part focusing on gas unbundling – or the extent to which gas suppliers should be separated from gas distribution networks – on Wednesday, preceded by a debate on the issue on Tuesday.

They will also debate on Tuesday in a second reading and vote on a plan to include aviation in the EU’s emissions trading system; a package of reforms to EU rules on food additives; and rules on airline ticket pricing that aims to do away with the annoyance of hidden taxes and charges in online ticket pricing.

On Thursday, MEPs will also vote on resolution on Zimbabwe and China, preceded by debates with the commission and the EU presidency on Wednesday.

G8 summit in Tokyo

This week (7 - 9 July), leaders of the group of eight largest economies in the world - US, Canada, Russia, Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy and France, collectively referred to as the G8 – will meet in Tokyo to discuss, among other things, the challenge of climate change and increasing concerns about global inflation, which is being driven by soaring oil and food prices.

With only a few days left before the summit, World Bank president Robert Zoellick this week called on the G8 leaders to act immediately to address the issue of increasing food prices, calling the crisis “a man-made catastrophe … [that] must be fixed by people.”

Meanwhile, the European Commission will on Monday (7 July) present a proposal to change the current directive on value added tax (VAT) in the EU, so as to allow member states to apply reduced VAT on a permanent basis in some sectors.

On Tuesday, the EU executive is to adopt a package aiming to make transport greener; a proposal for a School Fruit Scheme with the goal of increasing the share of fruit and vegetables in the diets of children at school; and two communications on the situation in the fisheries sector following the surge in oil prices.

On the same day, the commission will present a proposal for a special financing tool to help farmers from poorest countries boost their food production in the context of soaring food prices.

According to press reports, Brussels is to offer €1 billion from the EU’s unspent agriculture funds to achieve this goal.

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As Summit Approaches, G-8 Weighs Expansion

By Joseph Coleman, Associated Press, Saturday, July 5, 2008.

TOKYO — The Group of Eight, holding its summit in Japan starting Monday, has always been a club for the world’s biggest economies. Now a growing chorus is saying it’s time that the clubhouse doors swing open to some newcomers.

China has eclipsed more than half the club’s members in economic size, and the gross domestic product of Brazil is larger than Russia’s.

“When do they move from the G-8 to the G-13?” asked Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution, a Washington public policy organization. “None of these problems can be solved without the participation of countries like China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.”

Indeed, the G-8’s grip on the world economy isn’t what it used to be.

The United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia accounted for 58 percent of the world economy at current prices in 2007, International Monetary Fund figures show — down from 65 percent in 1997.

China’s $3.4 trillion economy is the fourth-largest in the world, nipping at the heels of No. 3 Germany. Brazil has the 10th-largest economy, just behind Canada but ahead of Russia. After Russia awaits fast-growing India.

It’s not only raw economics. The five nations mentioned by Brainard include serious military powers and the world’s two most populous nations, China and India.

It wouldn’t be the first time the G-8 has changed its membership.

The group held its initial summit in France in 1975 with six members: the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan. Canada came on board the following year. Russia formally joined in 1997.

In recent years, as G-8 countries have struggled to address the concerns of the rest of the world, such as poverty in Africa, the list of summit participants has ballooned, though the core nations still hold exclusive meetings.

A total of 22 heads of government — eight from the members, seven from Africa and seven from other leading economies — will be at the summit in Japan.

Members themselves are split over whether they need to formally open the group to new entrants.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been outspokenly in favor, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also supports expansion.

“It is in our interest to put them at the negotiating table, to treat them like partners and to put them face to face with their obligations,” Sarkozy told the French-Japan Club in November.

Others are not so sure. Japan, which has long basked in the honor of being the G-8’s only Asian member, has repeatedly shrugged off suggestions of expansion in the weeks leading up to the summit.

Then there’s the question of democracy.

John Kirton, director of the G-8 research group at the University of Toronto, has argued that the summit’s founding principles included promotion of open democracy. By that criteria, China does not meet requirements for membership, he has written.

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Sarkozy beaming at birth of Mediterranean Union.

ELITSA VUCHEVA, July 14, 2008, EUOBSERVER / PARIS – France officially announced the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean on Sunday (13 July) – the brainchild of its president Nicolas Sarkozy, who did not hide his pride in seeing the project’s official birth.

“We had dreamt of it. The Union for the Mediterranean is now a reality,” a visibly content Mr Sarkozy told journalists in Paris after a four-hour long working session with leaders of the countries members of the Union.

The project – under its official name Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean – regroups 43 states, including all EU members, and will be co-presided over by one EU and one Mediterranean country – currently Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, and Mr Sarkozy himself.

The goal is to boost ties between the EU and its southern neighbours, while the aim of the co-presidency will be to “improve the balance and the joint ownership” of the Union, reads the final declaration adopted by the 43 leaders.

Some critics of the project however had accused European states of wanting to dominate their southern partners.

But “north and south will be on an equal footing … We have exactly the same rights, exactly the same obligations,” said the French president during the opening of the summit.

Details of the Union for the Mediterranean’s institutional structure are still to be sorted out, but it will have a Joint Permanent Committee based in Brussels that will assist in the preparation of meetings of senior officials; and a joint Secretariat – whose “political mandate,” location, as well as the nationality of its director, are to be decided by the Union’s foreign ministers, who will meet in November.

A Union for the Mediterranean high-level summit will take place once every two years, while its foreign ministers will meet once a year.

Central parts of Paris were blocked off on Sunday and the city was under high surveillance, as some 18,000 policemen were mobilised to co-ordinate the 43 leaders’ security.

The only one who was invited but declined to attend was Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi – an outspoken opponent of the project, while the kings of Morocco and Jordan did not come, but instead sent representatives.

“Concrete projects:”

The leaders unanimously adopted a declaration deciding to work on six “concrete projects” as initial activities, Mr Sarkozy said.

1-3 The new grouping will address the cleaning up of Mediterranean pollution; development of maritime and land highways; or setting up a joint civil protection programme on prevention and response to disasters.

4. The yet to be established Secretariat will also aim to “explore the feasibility, development and creation of a Mediterranean Solar Plan,” looking into solar energy as an alternative source of energy.

5. A Euro-Mediterranean University, whose seat will be somewhere in Slovenia, hopes to “contribute to the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Higher Education, Science and Research area.”

6. Additionally, a so-called Mediterranean Business Development Initiative will support small and medium-sized enterprises.

However, criticism has already been raised about some controversial issues – such as immigration – being left out of the Union’s scope at this stage.

A diplomatic success?

But the project’s overarching goal is to progressively lead to peace in the Middle East, Mr Sarkozy said.

Conflicts in the region are seen as the main reason preventing the Barcelona Process – an initiative started in 1995 with similar ambitions to the new project – from achieving significant results.

On Sunday, “over the course of four hours, everybody was there. Everybody spoke, discussed and agreed [on things] … If it is possible during four hours, if we could agree on all these projects, we will continue, we will go further,” Mr Sarkozy told the press, stressing there had been no incidents at the summit, despite the tense relations between some of the leaders, and said he already saw a chance for peace from this first meeting.

Prior to his statement, Israel’s premier, Ehud Olmert, said Israeli and Palestinians had never been so close to reaching a peace agreement as now.

Furthermore, the French president announced on Saturday that Syria and Lebanon had agreed to establish diplomatic relations – an act he called “historic”.

Relations between the two countries have been particularly tense since the assassination of Lebanon’s former premier, Rafiq Hariri, in April 2005 – followed by Syria’s troops’ forced withdrawal from Lebanon.

Damascus has denied any involvement in Mr Hariri’s killing, but a number of UN inquiries have suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence forces had played some role in the assassination.

“Our position is that there is no problem with the opening of embassies between Syria and Lebanon … If Lebanon is willing to exchange embassies, we have no objections to doing it,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quoted as saying by French news agency AFP.

But the two countries must “define the steps to take to arrive at this stage” before mutual recognition, he stressed.

Observers have adopted a cautious approach however, insisting that many things have been said about peace in the region over the years and one should wait for concrete results before claiming success.

At the summit, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, warned: “The world is not going to be changed by the meeting today,” reported AFP. “But the entire region will, hopefully, be changed over time by this particular approach,” he added.

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Sarkozy revels in Club Med ‘bringer of peace’ role.
By John Lichfield in Paris, For The Independent, Monday, 14 July 2008.

France gathers world leaders for Bastille Day parade - Les Français sont arrivés.

A gargantuan summit of European and Middle Eastern leaders in Paris has produced a series of breakthroughs and diplomatic coups for the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Israel agreed to release prisoners to smooth the way for a new peace settlement with the Palestinian Authority. Syria promised to establish normal relations with Lebanon for the first time in 65 years. Perhaps most startling of all, a Syrian president and an Israeli prime minister sat in the same room, and at the same table, for the first time. However, the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, managed to vanish from the room before the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, gave his setpiece speech.

It remains to be seen whether the Sarkozy-inspired, 43-nation “Union for the Mediterranean”, launched yesterday, will suffer the same fate as previous botched efforts to establish formal links between Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The success of the inaugural summit 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.

Middle Eastern leaders joined their EU counterparts, including Gordon Brown, to discuss practical co-operation on issues such as energy, pollution, climate change and immigration. War and peace were not on the formal agenda but the unprecedented gathering provided an opportunity, and impetus, for deal-making between perennially hostile neighbours.

Mr Olmert, under increasing domestic pressure from allegations of corruption, held pre-summit talks in Paris yesterday morning with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. M. Sarkozy also attended.

Afterwards, Mr Olmert said that the two sides had “never been as close to the possibility of reaching an accord as we are today”. Israeli officials said that Mr Olmert was ready to release an unspecified, but large, number of Palestinian prisoners to help to achieve a settlement with Mr Abbas, on the permanent boundaries of the West Bank (Jerusalem excepted).
The leaders of 40 nations were shielded behind a protective “ring of steel”, with large parts of one of the world’s most visited cities out of bounds to the public. More than 6,000 police officers were mobilised to defend the no-go zone in a swathe of central Paris on both banks of the Seine. Neither tourists nor non-resident Parisians were allowed into an area of more than one square kilometre.

On Saturday, M. Sarkozy brokered a meeting between the Syrian President, Mr Assad, and the Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman. Damascus, which has long been accused of treating Lebanon as a de facto colony, agreed to establish normal government-to-government and diplomatic relations with Beirut for the first time since Lebanese independence in 1943.

The Israeli Prime Minister and Syrian President took their seats in the vast summit chamber in the sprawling, glass-roofed Grand Palais exhibition hall, just off the Champs Elysées. They did not exchange a handshake or a word or establish eye-contact. All the same, this was, as President Sarkozy pointed out, “a historic event”: the first time that Syrian and Israeli leaders had consented to be in the same room.

The “Union for the Mediterranean”, linking the 27 European Union member states, and 16 nations on the southern and eastern rims of the Med, is not what President Sarkozy first intended. He wanted an organisation which united only those countries with a Mediterranean coast-line. Germany and Spain objected. President Sarkozy – currently president of the EU council – agreed to merge his idea with an existing, and largely moribund, EU-Mediterranean association launched in Barcelona in 1995.

The new Union for the Mediterranean will attempt to set up common approaches to, among other things, global warming, investment, solar energy, water shortages, illegal immigration, maritime pollution, road and sea transport and university exchange programmes.

President Sarkozy said, in his opening speech to the summit, that this was an attempt to emulate the nuts-and-bolts approach of the original European Common Market. Age-old national quarrels and hatreds would be doused in debate and co-operation on vital issues of everyday importance. “The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable,” he said. “We will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe … We will succeed together; or we will fail together.”

The Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, the co-chairman of the summit with M. Sarkozy, stressed the importance of progress on practical, everyday issues as “building blocks” for peace.

The inaugural summit owed its success partly to President Sarkozy’s energy and vision – and partly to luck. Officials pointed out that several favourable factors came together: the diplomatic vacuum created by the change of administration in the US; the Israeli Prime Minister’s domestic political crisis, which made him hungry for progress with the Palestinians; and the Syrian President’s strategic decision to reduce his country’s diplomatic isolation.

All the same, the summit will go down as a diplomatic and political triumph for President Sarkozy: perhaps the most important single event in his 14 months in the Elysée Palace.

But Syrian and Israeli Leaders did not see eye-to-eye:

The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert looked his way, but Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad avoided any eye contact when the two leaders attended a summit that had stirred expectations of a first, friendly encounter.

The men were among more than 40 leaders gathered in Paris for the EU-Mediterranean summit and it was the first time they had ever been in the same room together.

Although Syria recently revived indirect negotiations with its long-time foe, President Assad clearly considered it was too soon to shake hands, chat or even nod to Mr Olmert.

As Mr Olmert entered the main hall of the Grand Palais, a Reuters photographer captured him casting glances toward the tall Syrian leader. But Mr Assad turned away, raising one hand to his face as if to block off any eye contact with the Israeli.

Mr Assad skirting the far wall, where interpreters sat in plexiglass booths, as Mr Olmert turned to talk to another delegate. The Syrian leader had left the room byt the time Mr Olmert gave his speech. A seating chart showed Mr Olmert had been assigned a place almost directly opposite Mr Assad for the round-table discussion.

Earlier yesterday, the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Mouallem, attended talks at which his Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, was also present. He did not speak to her and left the room when she got up to speak. Reuters

Damascus has denied any involvement in Mr Hariri’s killing, but a number of UN inquiries have suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence forces had played some role in the assassination.

“Our position is that there is no problem with the opening of embassies between Syria and Lebanon … If Lebanon is willing to exchange embassies, we have no objections to doing it,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quoted as saying by French news agency AFP.

But the two countries must “define the steps to take to arrive at this stage” before mutual recognition, he stressed.

Observers have adopted a cautious approach however, insisting that many things have been said about peace in the region over the years and one should wait for concrete results before claiming success.

At the summit, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, warned: “The world is not going to be changed by the meeting today,” reported AFP. “But the entire region will, hopefully, be changed over time by this particular approach,” he added.

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France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, centre, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, left, and Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,

right, attend a meeting at the Elysee Palace