A French plan for Mediterranean unity

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.

But the initiative has been scaled way back to make it palatable to everyone involved. Thorny issues like immigration have given way to projects such as a student exchange program, developing solar energy, and cleaning up the Mediterranean, all of which are expected to be discussed on Sunday.

Also, the Sarkozy Mediterranean union initially seemed to have no role for European states not bordering the blue Mediterranean. There was no consultation with Germany, little with the EU or even with Spain, which has profound issues of immigration, hosted the 1995 Barcelona process start-up, and certainly has a coastline.

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