The aim is to create a free trade zone between both sides of the Mediterranean by 2010.
Representatives of the EU and the countries of the southern Mediterranean agreed today at the VI Euromed Trade Conference to launch in Egypt in 2008 a working group that will analyze the creation of a free trade area between both shores by 2010.
European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson announced that Egypt will be the setting for the launch of a "Euro-Mediterranean business forum" of senior officials from the 27 member states and southern Mediterranean countries who will analyze how to make this free trade area in the Mediterranean effective.
Mandelson, who did not give further details about the project, said that this initiative advances the goal of ensuring that the Mediterranean region does not fall behind in its economic development compared to other geographical areas.
He also announced that after the Lisbon meeting, negotiations would begin to reach bilateral free trade agreements with Morocco, Israel, and Egypt.
Mandelson highlighted the importance of the countries in the southern Mediterranean basin and stressed that the EU wants to "strengthen ties" with that geographical area, in what he recalled is a continuation - in part - of the so-called "Barcelona Process", which began in the same city with a ministerial conference in 1995.
"There is enormous untapped potential," he noted regarding Euro-Mediterranean economic relations, after recalling that trade between the two sides of the Mediterranean had doubled in the past decade.
Furthermore, he asserted that during that same period, Mediterranean countries reduced their trade deficit with the European Union by 50 percent.
For his part, the Portuguese Minister of Economy - whose country holds the EU presidency - Manuel Pinho, stressed the need to increase economic exchanges at the business level, an objective to which, in his opinion, the group of senior officials who will begin working in Egypt from 2008 onwards can contribute.
Pinho emphasized that the initiative has a constructive spirit that will help achieve the set objectives.
Egypt's Minister of Industry and Trade, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, warned that, nevertheless, "the liberalization of trade in services -between the two sides- will be carried out gradually and through bilateral negotiations."
"The Mediterranean must become an area of prosperity through free trade," said Rachid, for whom this geographical area must accompany the changes currently taking place in the world.
The Secretary General for Foreign Trade of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Alfredo Bonet, stated that Spain will support negotiations to achieve the liberalization of trade in services between the countries on both sides of the Mediterranean.
The "Barcelona Process", which aims to bring the two shores of the Mediterranean closer together, began with a ministerial conference in that Spanish city in 1995.
The Barcelona event was followed by events in Malta in 1997; Stuttgart in 1999; Marseille in 2000; Valencia in 2002 and Naples in December 2003.
Along with the 27 members of the European Union, the Mediterranean partners are Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Israel, the Palestinian National Authority, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt and Jordan, plus Libya as an observer.
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