Here comes EuroMed: 14 days left to protest!

By Henrik R Clausen 13 January 2010

The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, also known as EuroMed, has been pretty much under the radar for 15 years. When it caused some public discussion in 2008, it was renamed ”Union for the Mediterranean”, and quietly permitted to proceed. Not much was heard of it, but now

EuropeNews has the scoop: It is being established now – and we have a window of merely 14 days to protest it.

The news is tucked away in this discreet ANSAmed news item:

MED UNION: JORDANIAN MASADEH APPOINTED AS SECRETARY

Quote:

Ahmad Khalaf Masadeh, Jordanian ambassador to Brussels, has today been appointed as secretary general of the Mediterranean Union.

It is remarkable that an ambassador of a non-democratic nation has been appointed to head the Union. Now, it should not be assumed that the European Union, run by a non-elected Commission and having a non-elected President, should care too much about such details.

But since the 16 non-EU states of the Mediterranean Union does include decent democracies (Israel, Croatia) as well as more dubious ones (Albania, Bosnia, Turkey), it would seem appropriate to appoint a representative from a democratic country to head the Union.

There are more remarkable passages in that piece. Quote:
A statement will be circulated tomorrow amongst the 42 Foreign ministers of the countries which make up the Mediterranean Union, with any comments to be made within 15 days. With the exception of surprise opposition, today’s appointment will be definitively approved by a process of tacit consent.

There we have it – full stealth mode. Unless someone protests loudly, this will proceed. Now, in order to field a reasonable protest, one needs to know what goes on, and politicians in democracies need to know if they have public support for the protest or not. Since neither of these are the case, no protests can be expected, and the project will continue.

What is the project about?
From the EuroMed web site:

• Political and Security Dialogue, aimed at creating a common area of peace and stability underpinned by sustainable development, rule of law, democracy and human rights.
• Economic and Financial Partnership, including the gradual establishment of a free-trade area aimed at promoting shared economic opportunity through sustainable and balanced socio-economic development.
• Social, Cultural and Human Partnership, aimed at promoting understanding and intercultural dialogue between cultures, religions and people, and facilitating exchanges between civil society and ordinary citizens, particularly women and young people.

Sounds sweet, doesn’t it? But it also suffers from the kind of abstraction where you can tuck in just about anything. To figure out what goes on and what the perspectives are, one should perhaps consult the EuroMed University in Slovenia.

One could also ask the Anna Lindh Foundation or study their Strategy Paper to find out.

Or solicit the opinion of the Alliance of Civilizations.

The AoC home page currently features a photo of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recent recepient of the ”King Faisal International Prize”, explicitly given for ”his services to Islam”. Report at JihadWatch.

The participation of persons and governments like these, who also openly maintain warm relations to the brutal Iranian regime, is in itself sufficient reason to suspend EuroMed indefinitely.

All of this, apart from the King Faisal International Prize, is paid for by our tax money, yet far removed from public scrutiny and debate. We should not accept our leaders to engage in a project like this, developed behind closed doors, with lofty and unclear perspectives. A project left naïvely open to exploitation by non-democratic member states and religious fanatics alike.

What is the difference between EuroMed and the Union for the Mediterranean?
Quote:

While maintaining the acquis of its predecessor, the Barcelona Process http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/euromed/barcelona_en.htm offers more balanced governance, increased visibility to its citizens and a commitment to tangible, regional and trans-national projects.

In other words, nothing major.

The change of name hostensibly serves to increase visibility, but in reality this is mere window dressing to confuse the press and the public.

There was an implicit assumption that when French President Sarkozy launched his Union for the Mediterranean, Sarkozy’s proposal for Mediterranean bloc makes waves it was a different initiative, that the concerns about the original EuroMed had been taken seriously, causing it to be replaced by a less ambitious and less dangerous ‘Club Med’. This is documentably false.

The confusion, however, worked quite well. It became unclear to journalists and citizens alike what was the nature of Sarkozy’s project, what kind of progress would take place, and if this made sense at all. The last significant press reports assume that the project was now faltering Sarkozy’s Union of the Mediterranean falters, thus nothing to worry about. In reality his “Club Med” has served to cover the fact that EuroMed proceeds apace.

Thus, we have been subject to several acts of deception. This is not in itself illegal or punishable under the law, it is merely disrespect for the spirit of democracy. We should not be all too surprised, for Sarkozy performed a similar sleight of hand for the Constitutional Treaty, now renamed the Lisbon Treaty, after it had been rejected in French and Dutch referendums.

Sarkozy had originally promised the electorate that the Constitutional Treaty would be replaced by a ‘Mini-treaty’, a concept that lead journalists and citizens alike to assume that the concerns that led to the rejection by the people had been addresssed.

The new Treaty, however, turned out to be wordier than the rejected one. Sarkozy kept his promise with a simple trick: Setting the revised version with a smaller type, that it could be printed on fewer pages. Such behaviour from our most trusted politicians leave us lost for words, damaging democracy itself by means of contempt from our very own leaders. More on that (a very interesting subject unto itself) in From Constitution to Lisbon.

This practice of deception alone is sufficient reason for the citizens of Europe to reject EuroMed, now renamed Union for the Mediterranean. It is a project not subjected to public scrutiny, conceived before it was understood that Islamism is a threat to the free world, and based on blind and naïve assumptions on the goodwill of all involved parties. This is unworkable and dangerous in the current political situation.

Much more needs to be researched and discussed about EuroMed, its implications for Europe, for immigration and the development of Euroabia. The latter was for a long time considered almost a conspiracist theory created by historian Bat Ye’or. Yet, if one connects the dots and follows the news, its implementation is well underway, formally as well as informally. She was right from the very first day.

Right now we need to pull the brake on establishing the EuroMed institutions. You can help to do that, by writing to the newspapers or even going directly to the Foreign minister of your contry, requesting an immediate halt to this stealth project. The time is now. We have 14 days.

UPDATE – Bat Ye’or comments:

I commend you for warning Europeans about the political decisions taken by their leaders without consulting their public opinions on matters that would change totally their future, and not for their advantage. Europeans should request to be consulted on Foreign policy and immigration issues.They should not allow a small group of people to conduct their affairs behind their back, as it has been for the whole immigration and Mediterranean policy since 1973 as European, Arab, and American sources confirm it. The media should be open to debates and should not be controlled by networks subjected to the Organization of the Islamic Conference fatwas. This is going on now. More and more international policy is conducted through international networks linked to the UN bodies weakening democratic institutions.

http://europenews.dk/en/node/28957