Mediterranean Economic Forum – Malta Institute of Management

Remarks by Amb. Sergio Piazzi,
PAM Secretary General
on the occasion of the
Mediterranean Economic Forum – Malta Institute of Management
St Julians, Malta, 14-15 November 2012
   

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Mr. President,

 

Distinguished guests,

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

 It is a pleasure and honor for me to participate in this important event on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, and I would like to thank the organizers, and MIM President, Mr. Reuben Buttigieg, for the kind invitation. This conference represents an excellent opportunity to discuss the drastic impact that recent events, notably the Arab Spring and the global financial crisis, have had on the economies of the Euro-Mediterranean zone. I am confident that we will seize this chance to identify not only the practical measures that need to be taken to face the challenges ahead, but also the new opportunities that have arisen.  

 

The Mediterranean political dimension, which witnessed the establishment of our Assembly in 2006, has changed radically. The most dramatic change relates to the democratization process of the Arab Spring, which calls for the specific and special attention from our Assembly if we wish to contribute effectively to stabilizing democracy and ensuring a better way of life for our citizens.

 

The peoples of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have fought for their freedom, and democratic elections have taken place in their countries. Dictators have been overthrown after years of despotism. Major constitutional reforms have been voted in Morocco, Jordan and Algeria. Syria is imploding in bloodshed with thousands of civilians victims of a vicious civil strife. A procrastinating international community – which can in part be justified by the limitations of existing international instruments – appears impotent in the face of the massacres in Halab, Homs, Houla, and Tremseh, in addition to the numerous untold appalling human rights violations that are a daily occurrence throughout the country.

 

Southern Mediterranean countries are calling for a closer cooperation to strengthen security, education, intercultural dialogue. We need to optimize the resources we have, and to do that, we need a stronger public-private interaction. We must not forget that development, sustainable development, represents also the best way to avoid radicalism and other not desirable conditions, such as clandestine immigration, organized crime and terrorism.

 

Let me briefly tell you what PAM is. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean is an interstate regional organization. It was established in 2006 in Amman, Jordan, as the dedicated instrument of parliamentary diplomacy in the Mediterranean region, resulting from the maturation of a regional political process initiated within the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the late 1980s, and known as the “Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CSCM)”.

 

PAM’s main objective is to find agreed solutions to today’s challenges, and to work towards a peaceful and prosperous region for all. PAM’s growing status on the regional and international scene has led the United Nations to grant our Assembly with the “Permanent Observer” Status at the United Nations General Assembly in December 2009.

 

Furthermore, our Assembly ensures the parliamentary dimension of the 5+5 Dialogue, the “Western Mediterranean Group”. This is another high level forum we have access to, and which, following the incapacity of the Union for the Mediterranean to deliver, is gaining more and more importance. In fact, the countries of the West Mediterranean recently decided to re-activate this group, and economic issues have high priority their agenda, especially in terms of unemployment and job creation.

 

PAM is today the “Centre of Excellence” of parliamentary diplomacy in the Mediterranean. It represents the national parliaments of the Mediterranean region, from Portugal to Morocco, via Jerusalem. Its work is carried out by the activities of three Standing Committees, which deal respectively with political cooperation and security, economic, social and environmental issues, and human rights. The recent revolutions in Arab countries, as well as the economic crisis, which have drastically transformed the Mediterranean region in terms of security, economy, society and culture, have also considerably affected the work of the Committees, which are now in the process of adapting to the new situation in order to be able to adequately tackle, through their activity, current problematic issues and prepare for future challenges.

 

Security is an issue that PAM has been tackling since its establishment in 2006. Our Assembly has dealt with different aspects of security such as terrorism, illegal immigration, national stability of member states, organized crime, energy and food security and the phenomenon of eco-mafias. In this regard, the Arab Spring has resulted in an increased involvement from PAM in security matters in the MENA region.

 

This is why our Assembly, among other requests, has gladly accepted an invitation by the Libyan Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for PAM to expand its support and partnership with Libya by providing the State with technical assistance and capacity-building, notably on how to empower the General National Congress to be able to guarantee security, on how to oversee the national government’s performance and in relation to the organization of study tours to selected members of the Congress. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs has also encouraged PAM parliamentarians to interact with members of the Libyan Congress and to organize joint workshops and seminars on the role of parliaments in order to exchange experiences and lessons learned.

 

In connection with Tunisia, our Assembly is fully aware of the necessity to re-activate tourism, which used to form a considerable part of the national GDP, and to create the conditions for the youth to have a job to maintain a decent level of life and to build their life in Tunisia. Leaving the country is the only option for them, at the moment. We must work together, also at the legislative level, to give them other options and better prospectives for the future.

 

Other countries of the region have a better situation. I am referring to Morocco, for example. Morocco has a “special relation” with the European Union. However, the economic and political relations South-South need to be improved. It is not logical, nor desirable from an economic point of view, the fact that North African countries export to and import more from the EU countries, than with their neighbor countries. There is an urgent need, in the region, for a better structured economic cooperation and integration on the model set by Turkey in the East Mediterranean.

 

All member parliaments of PAM have expressed their commitment to play a key role in support of the Mediterranean economies at all levels. For this reason, our Assembly unanimously decided to establish the PAM Panel on Trade and Investments in the Mediterranean, which was launched in May 2010 in Lisbon.

 

The main aim of the Panel is to gather, around the same table, parliamentarians and key economic actors, such as international financial institutions, banks, employers’ federations, regulators, investment promotion agencies, normative agencies, chambers of commerce and consumers’ associations, in order to stimulate, in the absence of an all inclusive Free Trade Area in the region, joint actions and propose practical measures – including at legislative levels – to be undertaken to strengthen trade and secure a social dignity for all peoples of the region.

 

The PAM Panel acts as a high level think tank, a comprehensive group with the purpose of addressing common challenges, identifying obstacles and proposing concrete law-making actions for the promotion and support of trade and investments in the Mediterranean region.

 

The participation at our meetings of senior experts from the major economic institutions allowed our Mediterranean parliamentarians to identify the needs to overcome the challenges that our region is facing: from the removal of trade barriers to the necessity to increase the South-South trade, from the necessity to have a simple and harmonized set of rules (such as the single window system) to the need of facilitating the access to credit for the SMEs. SMEs are considered the engine for economic growth. There are funds available for investments, but the procedures to get these funds are often too complicated.

 

After two operational meetings – the second of which was hosted by the United Nations Economic Agencies in Geneva – our Panel started to organize meetings of its various sectoral groups. The Energy Group was the first one to meet, and it organized the Conference “Mediterranean Energy Highways: an urgent need”. On that occasion, Med-TSO, a newly born Association of the Transport System Operators of the Mediterranean region, was launched under PAM auspices, and with the collaboration of MEDREG (the Mediterranean association of national Regulators), admitted since 2008 as an Observer at our Assembly.

 

The Energy Group met again last September, in Ouarzazate, Morocco, and tackled the issues of renewable energy, in particular solar energy, which was identified as the future for the Mediterranean, due to the ideal geographic position of our region to produce this kind of energy. In Morocco it was also agreed that PAM should oversee the establishment of a “Mediterranean Community of Energy”, in order to ensure coordination among the key actors concerned: parliaments, governments, industry, investors. The conclusions of the conference identified the establishment of projects based on renewable energy, the  reinforcement of national and regional transmission grids, the promotion of investments as well as that of harmonized, reliable and clear legal and regulatory frameworks as priorities in this field.

 

In connection with the field of solar energy, the Tunisian President specifically requested PAM’s assistance in evaluating a project related to solar energy that was suggested to be carried out in his country. This is a clear example of the tangible results that PAM’s activity produces regarding renewable energy. Our partners on energy-related issues are informed of this project and ready to provide us with their assistance.

 

The Finance and Investment Group of the PAM Panel met in Lisbon, on 29 June, hosted by the Portuguese Parliament. The event, called “Towards a Sustainable Economic Development in the Mediterranean region”, was organized in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

 

During the meeting it was underlined that access to credit is crucial to create the ideal conditions for Micro and SMEs to operate and to generate employment in the Mediterranean region. PAM particularly welcomed the decision of the EBRD, who participated to the production of the meeting’s content, to invest 2.5 billion EUR annually in the MENA region to support infrastructures and trade facilitation programs (pilot countries being Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia) in the framework of what was indicated by the G8 Deauville Partnership. Our Assembly formally requested all the member parliaments to ratify that decision, for the EBRD to be able to start its operations in the Mediterranean. PAM and the EBRD will furthermore soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding, and I will meet shortly with the EBRD President to formalize this working agreement.

 

The future activities of the PAM Panel include a joint meeting with the UN Trade and Productive Capacity Cluster, dedicated to the actions that parliaments can take to support economic growth, such as reducing further trade barriers and promoting investments in infrastructures. The meeting will take place in Geneva next February, and it will be the second time that a joint meeting between Pam and the UN Trade and Productive Capacity Cluster is organized. We are very proud of this achievement as it reflects the recognition of PAM as a reliable actor and counterpart by the UN.

 

In the framework of the cooperation between PAM and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, we will also take part in a Conference on Job Creation and Entrepreneurship in the MENA region, which will be held in Tunis later this month. UNIDO specifically requested PAM’s support to animate a dedicated meeting between entrepreneurs and MPs from the region in order to identify specific issues where parliamentary action at the national and regional level is required.

Finally, on the occasion of PAM’s 7th Plenary Session, which was held in Malta last October, the World Bank offered to host a PAM meeting on the topic of job creation and vocational training in Marseille in 2013, their European Office, an invitation that PAM welcomed and accepted. On this topic, we have already adopted a dedicated report, prepared in cooperation with the University of Turin, ILO and UNIDO. The document is available here, today, for all those interested, together with some other informative documents about our Assembly and its functioning.

 

I would also like to invite all those interested in the activities of our Panel and in its membership to contact my colleague, in this room, or my Office in the coming days. We will provide you with all the information you may need.

 

I wish to conclude by thanking, once again, the organizers for their kind invitation to this meeting and the opportunity to share with you the activities of our Assembly in support of the regional economic cooperation.

 

I wish you a successful meeting.

 

Thank you for your attention.