In a speech given in Tangier on the 23rd of October, Nicolas Sarkozy officially initiated his project of a Mediterranean Union. Once again, he stated his belief that what happens in this area is not only crucial for its residents, but also for the rest of humankind. According to Mr. Sarkozy, it is “in the Mediterranean that will be decided whether or not civilisations and religions will wage the most terrible of wars, whether or not the North and the South will clash, whether or not terrorism, fanaticism and fundamentalism will succeed in imposing their violence and their intolerance.” One could not emphasize the central strategic dimension of that area in a clearer way.

Thereby, Nicolas Sarkozy makes the Mediterranean rim the epicentre of the North-South relations and of the Muslim world and the West. Inspired by the achievements of the European Union, Mr. Sarkozy suggests to start implementing concrete solidarities and projects in order to make strides. At first, it is true that the creation of the European community was based on the idea of the pooling of coil and iron (two strategic resources back then) by France and Germany. As Jean Monet put it, the aim of such a process was to “make war unthinkable and materially impossible” for countries that used to fight against each other. The creation of a European community did not start with a global plan; it started with a few empirical projects, and then turned out to be something that stretched far beyond the initial expectations.

The President of France does not want to imitate the European institutional pattern, but the practical approach which led to its creation. He puts forward the idea of a diversified Mediterranean area where the common projects would not concern coil and iron anymore, but environmental issues, energy, transportation and water. It would be, as Mr. Sarkozy stated, a “union of projects”. The President suggested the organisation of a summit of heads of state and government of the resident countries in June 2008. Countries that are not residents of the area but that feel concerned by these issues would be invited too.

According to some observers, Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan appears to be visionary. Some others blame it for being too vague. His approach raises a few questions: How would this plan differ from the Barcelona Process, which is already blocked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? When he compares his plan to the European example, Mr. Sarkozy argues that the European community was not based on the expiation of the Germans. The European peoples, he says, immediately projected into the future. The President was right considering that one should not constantly live in the past and repentance. However, if Europe managed to reconcile after WWII, it was because Germany did reckon with the Nazi crimes. In Asia, Japan never went that so far as to admit it had committed war crimes, which kept the countries in the region from reconciling.

Most of all, Europe succeeded because it was at peace. The common projects have consolidated peace, but peace in Europe existed before these projects. In what kind of common projects could the Israelis and the Palestinians be involved? Is it possible for the Arab countries and Israel to engage themselves in such projects without having solved this conflict first? Cleaning the Mediterranean Sea from pollution, for instance, would benefit everybody in the area. Yet, how could this problem be solved considering the Palestinians have no access to the sea and Lebanon is still suffering from the ecological disaster caused by the war Israel waged last year?

If, as Mr. Sarkozy correctly underlines it, the Mediterranean area has indeed a huge strategic importance, it is precisely because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict that lies at the heart of the relationship between the Muslim world and the West. As long as it is not solved, Nicolas Sarkzozy’s ambitious plans will have a hard time being implemented. This is certainly the main flaw in the President’s approach: he wants to speed things up in order not to be blocked by the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but as long as this problem will exist, it will be difficult to do anything major. No matter how useful all the cooperation projects are, they will not be significant enough to overcome the central conflict, and they cannot hide nor make it up for the absence of peace there. This is the hard core of this problem that needs to be addressed in priority.