Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-18-Speech-3-170"
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"en.20090218.21.3-170"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, much remains to be said, of course, but I will start with the following question: what is the Community dimension in all this?
As regards the issue of women, Mrs Isler Béguin, we are naturally also involved as it appears in the Barcelona
. I remember that I was at the first women’s conference for the Mediterranean, held in 2007 in Istanbul. We continue, of course, to deal with this issue.
However there is still, as you know, on the one hand, the bilateral aspect, concerning the relations with each country and, on the other, the multilateral aspect, which is now one of the core concerns of the Union for the Mediterranean.
I would just like to say a quick word about the secretariat: we envisage the creation of a drafting committee that will soon be handed the responsibility, in particular, of preparing the secretariat’s legal statutes. The Commission has already made much progress in the preparatory work. These statutes will confer a legal personality on the secretariat; then they will need to be formally approved by the senior officials of the Union for the Mediterranean.
To conclude, I would like to tell you again that the participation of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly as an observer at all the meetings of the Union for the Mediterranean is very important and we support the reinforcement of this role within the Union for the Mediterranean. Moreover, when Mrs Kratsa went to Marseille, we gave her a lot of support on this issue.
I believe that I have raised the most important points. Of course, there is still a lot to be said on the subject.
Firstly, I can tell you that the Community dimension is important in this issue, because the Union for the Mediterranean project is based on the Barcelona process and has also inherited the
of the Barcelona process. All the
is there then. We have worked a great deal on that.
Secondly, the Union for the Mediterranean is part of the framework of the neighbourhood policy. The neighbourhood policy represents the bilateral policy and the Barcelona process, while the Union for the Mediterranean constitutes the multilateral part. Of course, I can also tell you that the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea are part of the same framework, although they are in the North. Do not worry then. Fortunately, everything is there. This, in fact, is what the French Presidency wanted, in other words, to share the copresidency with the Mediterranean countries – as I said before – and to work together.
Now, we – the Commission – are also managing all the future Community projects, because it is necessary and because we are also under Parliament’s control. Only those projects that may be financed by private funding are managed differently.
The secretariat, which will be located in Barcelona, will promote the projects. That is how we imagine the promotion, then we will try promotion using private funding because, for the rest, that will remain under the Commission’s control. The decision will be taken initially by the 27, as always, and afterwards, once again, the copresidency will be able to work in cooperation with the 143, the South and the North.
As for Mauritania, Mrs Isler Béguin, it participates only in multilateral relations, namely the Union for the Mediterranean, but is not involved in the neighbourhood policy. That is the only difference.
That said, I might add that, despite this temporary suspension, we are working at the Commission in a constructive spirit, of course, to implement the four to six projects that have been put forward as priorities. These are civil protection, de-pollution of the Mediterranean sea, maritime highways and also a solar plan, within the framework of which we are doing a lot of work on renewable energy, particularly solar energy, as the latter, along with wind energy and other energy sources, is very important.
In total, the Union for the Mediterranean can now benefit from financial support worth EUR 60 million in the 2008-2009 budget, particularly via regional programmes. Moreover, EUR 50 million has already been committed to the Neighbourhood Investment Fund to support investment projects in the region.
We also wanted to support the promotion of university exchanges and that is why, for example, I decided to extend the Erasmus Mundus programme to the countries of the southern Mediterranean to offer them extra university grants."@en1
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