Text tabled : A7-0219/2012

  Franck Proust (PPE), in writing. – (FR) The innovation that macro-regional strategies represent is interesting and the initial results in the Baltic Sea and the Danube are encouraging. I am in favour of this text as it shows Europe’s interest in looking towards the South, the region in which I myself was elected. However, I should like to point out that developing a macro-regional strategy for the Mediterranean will be much more difficult than for the rest of the European regions, as the Mediterranean region is a very distinctive area. It is a meeting point, but it is also a border. It is a border for people who share a history, culture, sometimes even the same origins, but whose average income per inhabitant is five times higher in the north than in the south. That is the most marked discrepancy across borders anywhere in the world. It is a border for countries that do not share the same characteristics. Some countries in the south are experiencing a return to democracy with the Arab Spring while others are confined to autocracy. So yes, we must develop a macro-regional strategy. However, we must do it in stages, starting with our closest partners, using culture, tourism, biodiversity, entrepreneurship and so on, and by aligning various existing instruments, such as the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the European Neighbourhood Policy.