Germany, France announce Mediterranean Union 'compromise'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said last 3th March they reached a "compromise" on Sarkozy's proposal for a Mediterranean Union, about which Berlin had expressed misgivings. They settled their differences over the proposed Mediterranean Union. The new body, to cultivate closer relations across the sea, would go ahead as a project of the whole 27-nation European Union (EU), the two leaders decided over dinner at a government mansion in Hanover, Germany.

"We reached a compromise regarding the Mediterranean Union that we both want and that excludes no one," Sarkozy told a news conference following talks with Merkel in Hanover, Germany.

"We are in agreement about the Mediterranean Union," Merkel said.

Officials said the two leaders would propose at an EU summit next week that the Mediterranean Union be adopted as an extension of an existing EU diplomatic initiative known as the Barcelona Process.

Merkel and Sarkozy also agreed to jointly propose EU plans to fight tax havens and to set up a working party to draft proposals on the automobile industry and preventing climate change.

Sarkozy reportedly aims to unveil his Mediterranean grouping at an EU summit on July 13-14 in Paris.

The arrangement it would effectively replace, the Barcelona Process involving 12 non-EU Mediterranean nations, has had a lacklustre history.