The EU makes security a priority on the southern border of the Mediterranean

The European summit that concluded this Friday after two days of meetings pointed to the southern border as one of the priorities of the European Union's neighborhood and security policy.

The decision, vigorously defended by Spain, seeks to redirect part of the attention of the European community club towards the Mediterranean, focused in recent years on its eastern borders and on friction with Russia.

The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, defended the need for "the Twenty-seven to look at the Mediterranean again."

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, pointed out at the end of the summit that the EU intends to intensify relations with its southern neighbors (from Morocco to Egypt, via Syria and Lebanon) and establish much closer collaboration on issues such as "The strengthening and resilience of the economy and societies", in addition to "preserving security, meeting the challenge of mobility and migration, and offering a future perspective to people living on both shores of the Mediterranean" .

The issue of defense centered a large part of the day this Friday, in which the will to promote European autonomy in this area and increase military spending was reaffirmed, but maintaining close collaboration with NATO.

Proof of this was the intervention of the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, who welcomed the "strong message of the new Biden Administration to rebuild alliances, to strengthen the transatlantic link."

The Twenty-seven supported the application of the agenda proposed by the High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, in a communication on the southern neighborhood in which the need to revitalize the relationship with the southern shore of the Mediterranean is described as a “strategic imperative” .

The community plan comes when, in 2020, 25 years of the so-called Barcelona Process, one of the barely successful attempts to strengthen ties with the southern neighborhood of the EU, have just ended.

The process was reconverted in 2007 into the Union for the Mediterranean, a multilateral association that has tried to promote regional integration and cohesion.

The renewed European strategy starts from a gloomy outlook in a region where there are entrenched conflicts, population displacements, economic and social crisis and geopolitical clashes between powers.

The problems caused in the area by the lack of security, the climate and environmental crisis or the fragility of the rule of law feed an exodus that leaves hundreds of dead and missing every year in the Mediterranean.

Migratory Chapter

The migratory chapter of the plan offers the establishment of an effective system for managing flows and requests for asylum, with specific support for displaced populations.

But in exchange, it demands greater cooperation in the countries of origin and transit for the return of people who have entered community territory illegally and do not have the right to asylum.

As an incentive, the EU ensures that it will develop legal entry channels with a talent attraction program.

"Too many people risk their lives trying to enter the EU illegally, which fuels a criminal trafficking industry and destabilizes local communities," laments Borrell's document, approved by the European Commission earlier this month.

Brussels' bet is to counteract these trends "spurring a socio-economic recovery" in whose financing the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and the IMF should participate.

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The European Commission itself hopes to allocate 7,000 million euros of investment to the area under the new multiannual financial framework of the EU (the budgets for 2021-2027), still pending implementation.

Brussels estimates that this item will allow mobilizing up to 30,000 million in public and private investment.

The Union also sees it as essential to contribute to the pacification of conflict zones, especially in Syria, Libya or peace in the Middle East.

Cooperation, according to Brussels, is also key to combat phenomena such as terrorism or extremism.