Europe and the Maghreb

CLUB MED

Brussels

The nightmare is obvious: North Africa disintegrates into civil wars, terrorism and religious zealotry infect Europe's cities, and Arab migrants, by the hundreds of thousands, cross the Mediterranean for a better life in an unwelcoming, racist-in-clined Europe. Far-fetched?

Probably-but plausible enough for the European Union to have announced a "Euro-Med" strategy, replete with aid and a special conference of interested governments in late November in Barcelona. So what is Emma Bonino, the commissioner in charge of fisheries, doing making veiled threats against Morocco? After five months, negotiations for a new fishing agreement with Morocco broke down this week-end Mrs Bonino responded by calling for "a full examination" of the EU's relations with the country. Since these relations give Morocco aid and preferential access for its farm produce to the EU market, its government is furious. "Morocco", thundered one newspaper, "is not in the habit of accepting ultimatums, which hark back to the age of colonialism". So there.

The explanation for Mrs Bonino's bullying is simple enough: Morocco. 500.000 of whose people are said to rely on fishing for their jobs, has been demanding that the Spanish and Portuguese boats that fish off its coast should make drastic cuts in their catch (for example, by two-thirds for squid and octopus). With 8.000 Spanish fishermen confined to port since the expiry on April 30th of the old agreement with Morocco, and with some 40.000 Spanish jobs at risk, the EU reckons it has to look tough. Cynics will add that Spanish fishermen can be tough enough themselves (they are already blocking the entry of Moroccan products into the port of Almeria) and that Spain's embattled prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez, has no need for new worries.

On the other hand, Mr Gonzalez also needs a successful summit in Barcelona. as the holder of the EU's six-month rotating presidency, Spain agrees with its predecessor, France, and its successor, Italy, that the Union must beware the German obsession with expanding the EU eastward. Instead, they say, it should look south, too.

For the past four years the Union has promised, in loans and gifts, twice as much money to Central and Eastern Europe as to the countries on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean - even though the Mediterranean countries have twice the population (around 209m, compared with 110m in Central and Eastern Europe) and even though this population will have increased by a half within the next 15years. Moreover, the EU's trade surplus with the Mediterranean countries is twice as big as the one it runs with its neighbours to the east. Given that the GDP per person of the Mediterranean countries is about 10% of that of the European Union, the Spanish, French and Italians, who together host most of the 4m-5m migrants and their children from the south, reckon that the arithmetic could spell danger.

It could. But the question is how the Barcelona conference can begin to rectify it. The guests will be not just the EU's 15members, but also Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, palestine, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta. Even with Libya (still a pariah) excluded, the Europeans will be hard pressed to keep all the participants happy.

But Union optimists are undaunted: dangle the carrot of assistance and who knows what may be achieved? Already the EU has agreed to increase its aid to 4.6 billion ecus ($6billion) for 1995-99, and already a commercially generous "association agreement" has been signed with Tunisia, with Israel due to follow suit. The aim is to conclude similar dealswith Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon "as quickly as possible". Of the other guests. Cyprus and Malta are on the path to membership; Turkey applied long ago and, conceivably, may one day qualify. Put such agreements together with other elements of the Euro-Med strategy and by the year 2010 there may, the optimists burble, be a European-Mediterranean free-trade area, with economic prosperity and political stability increasing in tandem to the benefit of both sides of the Mediterranean. Inshallah.

How they compareMediterranean countries*Eastern Europe**EU 12Population, 1993, m204109348Population, 2010***297116376GDP, 1993, $bn3622246.785GDP per head, 1993, $1.7462.05719.485EU budget commitment, 1994, $m5631.172--*Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey

**Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Slovakia

***Forecast

Sources: World Bank; EIU, European Commission