Euro-Med Movement

The Euro-Med Movement has been launched in a crucial moment for the entire international community at the beginning of the war in Iraq.

The Movement:

- Notes that the Mediterranean is today at the centre of the world crisis and the place where the main challenges faced by the international community are occurring: security, peace and war, the threat of a clash of civilisations, regionalisation processes, sustainable development, differences between men and women or the relationship between democracy and development.

- Considers that the post-war crisis that has arisen has brought to the fore the urgent need to reform international multilateral institutions, to ensure greater democracy, efficiency and transparency and to adapt them to the new realities and challenges of the 21st century. We must also recover the "Agenda of Hope", and promote the International Criminal Court, the agreement on antipersonnel mines, the sustainable development of Johannesburg, etc.

The Euro-Mediterranean process, launched in Barcelona in 1995, is the ideal model and the only way to promote political, economic and sociocultural cooperation in the region. A greater effort and will are required to make decisive progress in the specific implementation of the agreements. Promoting a formula midway between association and adhesion, as the European Commission has pointed out, could contribute towards this objective. Relations between both shores must be enriched and diversified, extending to civil society, businesses and NGOs.

The Barcelona Declaration adopted at the Barcelona Conference expresses the 27 partners’ intention to:

1. Establish a common Euro-Mediterranean area of peace and stability based on fundamental principles including respect for human rights and democracy (political and security partnership),

2. Create an area of shared prosperity through the progressive establishment of a free-trade area between the EU and its Partners and among the Mediterranean Partners themselves, accompanied by substantial EU financial support for economic transition in the Partners and for the social and economic consequences of this reform process (economic and financial partnership), and

3. Develop human resources, promote understanding between cultures and rapprochement of the peoples in the Euro-Mediterranean region as well as to develop free and flourishing civil societies (social, cultural and human partnership).

The relationship between democracy and development must also be reinforced.

The fight against terrorism, which is the greatest threat against freedom, human rights and democracy, must be based on a concept of global democratic security that includes fighting against illegal immigration mafias, organised crime, hunger, AIDS and pandemics. We do not accept the militarisation of the response to terrorism as an efficient and valid solution. Very much to the contrary, we must launch a debate on the need for disarmament, starting in our Mediterranean region. Certainly, the disarmament of only the Arab countries would be impossible and unsustainable.

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