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Euro-Mediterranean Partnership & Water
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The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the so-called Barcelona Process),launched by the Barcelona Declaration of November 1995, embraces a vast programme of collaboration in a variety of spheres – economic and financial co-operation in particular – and indicates the priority actions for developing Euro-Mediterranean co-operation. |
Based on the principles of the Rome Charter (1992), a specific chapter of the Declaration is dedicated to water. Before the Barcelona conference, two major Mediterranean water conferences were held:
- The first Mediterranean Water Conference in Algiers in 1990.
- A second conference in Rome on 1992-10-28/30, saw the drawing-up of the Mediterranean Charter for Water.
The turning point came at the first Euromed Foreign Ministers Conference
in Barcelona on 1995-11-27&28.
The Barcelona Declaration defined three partnerships:
- Political & security: "securing peace and stability"
- Economic & financial: "establishing an area of shared prosperity"
- Social, cultural & human: "promoting mutual understanding by exchanges of experiences between civil societies and the development of social and cultural cooperation"
The partners have thereby set the stage for the establishment of a Free Trade Zone by the year 2010.
The economic and financial section of the Barcelona Work Programme was divided into the following 13 chapters, including water:
- Agriculture
- Energy
- Environment
- EuroMediterranean Free Trade Area
- Fisheries
- Industry
- Investment
- Regional planning
- Science & technology
- Telecommunications and information technology
- Tourism
- Transport
- Water: (abstract from the Barcelona work programme, 1995)
"The Mediterranean Water Charter was adopted in Rome in 1992. Water is a priority issue for all the Mediterranean partners and will gain in importance as water scarcity becomes more pressing. The purpose of cooperation in this area will be as follows:
- to take stock of the situation taking into account current and future needs;
- to identify ways of reinforcing regional cooperation;
- to make proposals for rationalising the planning and management of water resources, where appropriate on a joint basis;
- to contribute towards the creation of new sources of water".
Following the turning point at Barcelona, came a number of Euro-Mediterranean conferences addressing water management (see "key dates" for texts):
• Marseille, 1996-11-25&26. Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Water Management.
• Malta 1997-04-16. 2nd Euromed Foreign Ministers Conference.
• Helsinki 1997-11-28. Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on the environment.
• Napoli 1997-12-09&10. Euro-Mediterranean Conference of 27 General Directors of Water Management.
• Palermo 1998-06-03&04. Euromed ad-hoc ministerial meeting.
• Stuttgart 1999-04-15&16. 3rd Euromed Foreign Ministers Conference.
• Torino 1999-10-18&19. Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Local Water management. Declaration.
• Marseille 2000-11-15&16. 4th Euromed Foreign Ministers Conference.
• Madrid 2001-11-12. Conference of the 35 Euro-Mediterranean Water Directors.
• Barcelone 2005-11-27/28. 10th Anniversary Summit of the Euro-Med Partnership.
• Rome 2005-11-24/25. Conference of the 35 Euro-Mediterranean Water Directors
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