Euro-Mediterranean Forum held thematic session “Mediterranean between the Culture of Dialogue and Politics of Conflict”

In her speech to the present parties, coordinator Nives Malenica pointed out that the Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean, as a key instrument of the EU foreign policy towards the Mediterranean region, had through its 13 years of institutional history created a constructive political and institutional infrastructure of an all-encompassing partnership between the EU and region, which has a potential for further development and strengthening. She recalled that since 2004 Croatia, as an EU membership candidate, had participated in the Barcelona Process foreign ministers’ meetings and summits as an observer, and had expressed the intention to join the Barcelona Process in May 2008. By attending the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean July 13th 2008, Croatia became the initiative’s participant, accepting the Barcelona Process acquis and the contents of the Paris Declaration, which has created the Union for the Mediterranean.

Coordinator Nives Malenica also said that Croatia welcomes the qualities of the reformed Barcelona Process – opening up towards all of the coastal Mediterranean countries, strengthening the political level of the relations, greater co-ownership over the process, equal participation, and a higher visibility in the existing relations through large-scale regional and subregional projects. She reminded that the annual meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean’s foreign ministers in November 2008 in Marseilles had laid the groundwork for the implementation of the conclusions from the Paris Summit’s Joint Declaration in the part that concerns the institutionalization of the process and the implementation of the six projects from the Declaration’s annex, as well as adopted the Action Plan for 2009. The Marseilles Declaration lent a strong support for the parliamentarian dimension of the Union for the Mediterranean and the status of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, stressing the need for a concrete action on the local and regional level through the founding of the EuroMed Assembly of local and regional authorities.

Coordinator Nives Malenica also noted the priorities of Croatia’s participation in the Union for the Mediterranean’s 2009 activities, saying that the first round of sector ministerial meetings would yield a comprehensive insight into the Euro-Mediterranean process on the political and sector level, after which further concrete projects of interest for Croatia could be determined. In that regard, she mentioned that Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Gordan Jandroković himself has presented in Marseilles Croatia’s ideas for concrete area cooperation in the projects of maritime security and protection in the Mediterranean, development of sea highways and port linkage, pollution cleaning, alternative energy sources and solar plan for the Mediterranean, as well as the development of small- and middle-sized entrepreneurship.

She concluded that Croatia, with its transition experience and active participation in Europe’s southeast, wants to lend a constructive support to the processes of the Union for the Mediterranean, as well as affirm the Mediterranean dimension of its foreign policy.