A summit on Sunday to launch French President Nicolas Sarkozy's vision of North African-European harmony, called the "Union of the Mediterranean," promises to be a colorful show: Some 40 leaders from states around a sea that borders three continents will be in Paris to talk about integrating a vast and diverse region better known for clashing and squabbling.

But whether Mr. Sarkozy's grand notion – at first, doing projects in solar energy, disaster relief, water, and agriculture – can find a solid institutional identity and surmount funding hurdles, not to mention German and Spanish pique at initially being left out, is hardly clear.

Still, under the translucent dome of the Grand Palais, France will host elected heads of state, Maghreb autocrats, Arabs and Israelis, Christians and Muslims, Moroccan and Balkan diplomats – in pursuit of a north-south stability that is viewed with a fair share of skepticism by most participants, who feel they need to be there anyway.

It's quite a cast, with a long history of grievance and dispute: Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Syria's Bashar al-Assad will attend along with Israel's Ehud Olmert. Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who doesn't want to participate in lieu of Turkish EU membership, finally agreed this week to come. Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, warning of colonial put-downs from Europe and of Israeli normalization of relations with the EU, is the lone holdout. Tellingly, perhaps, there are no plans for a final photograph.

Sarkozy wants the Union to energize the "Barcelona process" – a slightly moribund EU effort to coordinate Europe and North Africa relations ranging from culture and immigration to trade and politics. How the French-led Union will relate to Barcelona, which is controlled by the European Commission, a body that has steadily forced changes to the French plan, is central to its success, experts say.

"We need to see whether the Union can be effective and autonomous, or will simply become an agency attached to the Barcelona process," says Leila Vignal, at St. Anthony's College, Oxford. "There are a lot of hurdles for an idea that was already unrealistic."

Still, the Union offers a number of things that Barcelona doesn't. Rather than a vacuous effort to address disparate "issues," the Union is taking on a concrete set of small actionable projects designed to do a few things well.

Importantly, also, it will operate under a north-south co-presidency. This allows shared decisionmaking and counters fears that former colonial powers, or a purse-waving bureaucracy in Brussels, is trying to control North Africa. Egypt, and at first France, will hold those presidencies. A "secretariat" headquarters will be announced Sunday, with cities from Tunis to Barcelona, Marseilles, and Brussels lobbying for the prize.

"The new union activates the principle of joint ownership, which existed only in theory in the Barcelona process," Egyptian foreign minister Abuld Gheit told reporters in Cairo this week. He added that the co-presidency, "means a country from the north and a country from the south are jointly running the new union. I would like to place the emphasis on the world jointly," he said.

A grand regional grouping born in Paris that may one day offer a modest alternative to the rising economies of Russia and China is just the sort of idea Sarkozy prizes as a way to restore French and European leadership. It comes as France takes over the six-month EU presidency. But its formation has been marked by just the sort of cavalier, Francocentric behavior that irks other EU members, particularly Germany, whose leaders point out that its taxpayers will be financing this as well.

Indeed, Sarkozy's initial vision, articulated in Toulouse when he was still a presidential candidate, was positively interstellar in scale. France would gain good grace in its old sphere of influence and earnestly shape a new world of cooperation and commercial exchange ranging from banking and universities to the environment and trade, common energy, and antiterrorism. It would be a new paradise connecting Paris and the Maghreb.

Page: 1 | 2