The Union for the Mediterranean: Establishment and Cooperation

The Union for the Mediterranean emerged through adjustments to a French initiative and existing Euro-Mediterranean cooperation mechanisms. Nicolas Sarkozy's early proposal focused on coastal states; German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed allowing only some EU members to benefit from EU funds. In March 2008, the European Council endorsed a scheme encompassing all EU members and Mediterranean partners, after which the European Commission proposed detailed arrangements.

On 13 July 2008, the Paris summit met under the joint chairmanship of French President Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Its Joint Declaration connected the new arrangements to the Barcelona Process begun in 1995, while adding co-presidency and project-cooperation mechanisms. As Roberto Aliboni and Fouad M. Ammor's study observed, this required a realignment of the existing partnership rather than simply placing two names side by side.

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The Paris declaration identified Mediterranean depollution, maritime and land transport, civil protection, solar energy, higher education and research, and small and medium-sized enterprise development as priorities. These included both proposed new projects and existing cooperation to be strengthened. The Euro-Mediterranean University in Slovenia, for example, became a focal point in the educational network; educational cooperation as a whole did not begin from nothing on the day of the summit.

The participants envisaged cross-border infrastructure, cooperation among experts and exchanges of people producing identifiable socioeconomic results from political dialogue. The declaration continued to recognize the role of bilateral agreements and the European Neighbourhood Policy, and allowed groups of willing partners to join particular projects. This flexible arrangement reduced the need for every undertaking to be implemented jointly by all participants, but did not automatically supply funding or commitments to construction.

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On 3–4 November 2008, the Marseille foreign ministers' meeting elaborated the institutional arrangements and proposed the shorter name, Union for the Mediterranean. One co-president would represent the EU side and the other the Mediterranean partners; senior officials would handle work programmes and project assessment, while a Joint Permanent Committee in Brussels would help prepare meetings. The League of Arab States was admitted to meetings at every level.

The Secretariat, based in Barcelona, was principally responsible for gathering and screening projects, seeking funding and implementation partners, and monitoring progress. Foreign ministers and senior officials retained political decision-making powers, while the Secretariat performed technical work. Projects could originate with governments, regional organizations, businesses or civil society groups. After political endorsement, the relevant partners still had to arrange financing and execution case by case under their own procedures.

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The decisions taken in 2008 did not immediately create a fully functioning office. Senior officials adopted the Secretariat's statutes on 3 March 2010, and Spain and the Secretariat signed a headquarters agreement in Madrid on 4 May. The agreement recognized the Secretariat's legal capacity to enter contracts, hold property, receive and disburse funds, and undertake related activities. Spain provided office premises in Barcelona free of charge, while the Secretariat bore routine maintenance costs.

The headquarters agreement operated first under provisional application arrangements. Its formal entry into force on 23 March 2012 was announced separately in Spain's official gazette. The political launch in 2008, the statutes and headquarters arrangements in 2010, and the agreement's formal entry into force in 2012 were therefore connected but distinct stages that should not be compressed into a single date.

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The Marseille declaration stipulated that the Secretariat's operating costs would be supported by voluntary contributions from partners and the European Community budget. In principle, seconded staff would be funded by their sending institutions. Projects themselves had to seek separate financing; the total regional assistance provided through the European Neighbourhood Policy could not all be counted as money directly at the Union's disposal.

A 2010 scrutiny report by the UK House of Commons recorded that senior officials had agreed a budget of €6.25 million for 2011, the Secretariat's first full working year, less than half the initial proposal. Expenditure required annual financial reports and external auditing, and European Commission contributions were disbursed in instalments. These budget negotiations showed that establishing a joint institution also involved practical compromises among staffing levels, oversight of spending and willingness to contribute.

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The Gaza desalination plan was the first project to receive the Union's project label. Water experts discussed the proposal in Barcelona in May 2011. In June, the Palestinian Water Authority submitted the project documentation, which the Secretariat's Environment and Water Division assessed. On 22 June, senior officials from the 43 members endorsed it unanimously in Brussels and asked the Secretariat to help identify financing.

The archived project documentation proposed that the first-phase desalination facility would produce 55 million cubic metres of water a year, alongside water transmission and distribution infrastructure, measures to reduce leakage and a dedicated power supply. These were planning targets, and endorsement did not mean that construction was already complete. The Union's early role can be defined concretely: organizing a regional water problem into a technical proposal, securing endorsement through a common procedure, and then connecting funders with implementing bodies.

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The institutional design did not eliminate regional conflicts. A 2010 British parliamentary report recorded that the summit planned for Barcelona in November that year had again been postponed, in connection with the stalled Middle East peace negotiations. The technical Secretariat could advance project preparation, while political meetings remained vulnerable to relations among members.

In their 2009 study, Aliboni and Ammor had already identified joint decision-making, intergovernmental coordination and selected projects as the pillars of the new mechanism, while noting possible overlap between existing European Commission projects and the new Secretariat. They advocated careful coordination and substantive involvement by southern-shore partners in planning. The Union for the Mediterranean's early history thus reveals a twofold task: establishing sustained project work while managing tensions among equal participation, political consensus and sources of resources.

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