Word: mediterraneanize
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...across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to a summit to debate his ambitious agenda for bolstering trade in the region, protecting the environment and cracking down on terrorism and the trafficking of contraband goods, drugs and illegal immigrants. His much touted plan for a union for the Mediterranean looks stillborn. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has worried that it could undermine the European Union; Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has deemed it a colonialist affront to Maghrebi pride. Yet at its core, Sarkozy's plan has an insight that is as simple to state as it is difficult to realize...
...success of El Phil's enterprise should not obscure how much remains to be done. Pierre Beckouche, a senior researcher with IPEMED, a Paris-based think tank on Mediterranean issues, says that regional economic advantages have been well exploited elsewhere over the past decade: by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in North America and the ASEAN free-trade area in Southeast Asia. But the E.U.'s 1995 "Barcelona Process," which was meant to encourage deeper ties across the Mediterranean, has largely been a Brussels-driven dud. "What's missing is a network of firms, of experts, of political...
...Africa and market-distorting subsidies in Europe, farming is ripe with possibilities. If they are not taken advantage of, however, the consequences are plain: farmworkers in North Africa will head for Europe. Last year, as many as 1 million are believed to have left the poorer shores of the Mediterranean. (The figure includes not just those from the Maghreb, but also migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Asia, drawn to people-trafficking routes that transit North Africa.) In some parts of the E.U., such migrants fill up to 90% of jobs in fields and packing plants, which...
...Agriculture Organization (FAO). "There is big potential in fruits and other high-value crops," Feiler says of the entire Maghreb area. "But there are too many small farms that don't have the resources to gain access to foreign markets." Policy changes are needed on both sides of the Mediterranean. In North Africa, governments have kept prices low, fearing the political consequences of expensive food. And in Europe, the E.U.'s entrenched system of farm subsidies lets farmers sell their products on the domestic market at lower prices than foreign competitors. Despite his free-trade rhetoric, Sarkozy is not expected...
Sarkozy's plan is, in any event, hardly racing along. The French proposal was originally meant to encompass only the 19 countries along the Mediterranean rim. But Merkel led a push to include all E.U. nations, a move that many fear could dilute what was already something grandly ambitious. And for all Sarkozy's fine words, most of the hard work of sorting out North Africa's problems will have to be done by those who live there...