Martinez (TDI). – (FR) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the 1960s people used to say Africa was not on the right track, and now, in 2000, Africa has still not arrived. And why not? Because no destination was established. Where do you expect to get if you do not know where exactly you are heading? Africa’s initial objective was to achieve independence, with nation states instead of ethnic tribes, and the result was Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis, Nigeria, the Ibos, and Biafra. The next objective was Socialism, the fair-haired comrades. Black Africa was supposed to turn red. The result was famine in Ethiopia, Algeria’s agriculture destroyed, not to mention Guinea under Sékou Touré. The white man, Mitterand, then offered Africa parliamentary democracy, parties instead of tribes. The result was a permanent situation of coup d’état, even in the Ivory Coast.

The present objective appears to be liberalism, the market, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation. The result is rebellion by the poor people of Tunis and the poor people of Casablanca at the rise in prices, European meat destroying the Fulani’s livestock farming in Africa, the Latin American banana destroying the Cameroon or Ivory Coast banana, and fats extracted from GMOs are about to destroy the Ivory Coast’s cocoa. All in all, from Socialist Africa to ultraliberal Africa, from the European Development Fund to the World Bank, from the summits in Bujumbura, Addis-Ababa, Nairobi, Casablanca, and now, on 3 April, Cairo, it is always the same assessment, the same threesome of poverty, epidemic and massacre.

Even so, on 4 January, the UN found the final solution, or the miracle cure: a proportion of the 800 million Africans would have to emigrate. They even set a figure: 159 million Africans were to be unloaded on Europe by 2025. In the same way that the problems of the inner city are not solved by building towns in the countryside, Africa’s problems will not be solved by shifting part of Africa to Europe.

The logical thing to do today is to apply to Africa what has worked elsewhere, what has worked wonders in our countries, in the United States, in Europe, the solution which in our countries created heavy industry, agriculture, the textile industry, the solution which in our countries created growth and sustainable development. There is one word for this solution – protectionism, and there is one instrument for this solution – customs barriers. This solution has been worked out in theoretical terms, and called ‘self-centred development’. And, what is more, the new Senegalese President is inspired by this, telling the young people that they should get involved rather than waiting for the billions to arrive from Europe.

In practical terms, Africa will achieve the first stage in growth according to the Rostow model if it protects its agriculture, its livestock farming, its self-employed craft industry, and its emergent economy. Opening up to the world market, on the other hand, will expose it to the law of the jungle and to the plundering of the natural resources of Africa, wood, oil, minerals, the flora and even the fauna, by multinationals. This is, moreover, what we have seen, ladies and gentlemen, with the privatisation of specific key sectors in Africa. For the Africans it was a negative outcome.

Africa does not therefore need either the cut-throat world economy or the economy of world charity, with the Holy Father and the Blessed Jacques Chirac, or the cancellation of a government debt of EUR 300 billion. The watchword of the solution is customs protection on the African side and, on the European side, intelligent intergovernmental cooperation, of which the Lomé Convention was a prime example. In this respect, the Mediterranean could serve as a test bench for a Euro-African policy which respects identities.

We in the Front National proposed a practical working method which involved dealing with the individual issues – water resources, soil erosion, desertification, the management of fisheries resources, livestock farming, pollution, control of migration flows – in a Marshall plan for the Mediterranean and Africa which would be funded from customs duties, reimbursable to African states in the form of open credit accounts in European banks. We have proposed an international organisation, with an intergovernmental high-secretariat of the Mediterranean. This would have its headquarters in Cairo, Tangiers or Tunis. An interparliamentary assembly, like that of the ACP. I feel that Athens would be the ideal site, or perhaps even a university in Valencia, Montpellier, Nice or Barcelona. And there perhaps the words of Raymond Loulle would hold sway. The practical implementation of these Euro-Mediterranean projects, respecting the identities of both shores, north and south, and involving around twenty Euro-Mediterranean states, would open the way to greater ambitions. It could then be extended to relations between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

This is a great project, Mr President, on the scale of humanity as a whole, and humanity needs both Africans and Europeans. All the more reason not to flood Africa with the unregulated world economy and not to flood Europe with an influx of people. Humanity needs Africa where, it is said for the first time, in Kenya, man first stood upright, and humanity needs Europe where, for the first time, in Greece, thought first stood upright.