Zawaya

Strong political will and further economic integration

By: Mohamed Mohamedou Khattat

The AMU celebrated its 21st anniversary on February 17, 2010. We would have sung “happy birthday” to the Union, if we didn’t have this unbearable and penalizing delay in the establishment of our “common home” in the Maghreb, which keeps giving us many “headaches”, so to speak.

Starting from the AMU foundation summit in Marrakesh in 1989 and the first Maghreb summit of Heads of State in January 1990, to the last summit held in April 1994; the troubles caused by the AMU have been overflowing, and plunging the Union into a paralysis that prevents it from convening a new conference for the Maghreb Heads of State, especially due to the indefinite postponement of the summit that was scheduled in Algiers in June 2002, and then in December 2003.

If the objectives of the Arab Maghreb Union were utopian, its age would still be young to face the process of the galloping globalization that leaves no room for poor countries such as ours that are unable to survive individually on their own resources today. The AMU is therefore a strategic choice given the need for a regional integration that takes into account various challenges and issues.

The dynamic of regional groupings aiming to anchor the ties of brotherhood and cooperation between peoples, has been spreading everywhere from Europe to Latin America, passing by the Gulf and arriving near us by reaching Africa. More importantly, this new world dynamic made our leaders become aware of the urgent need to revive the establishment of the AMU, which is primarily an irreversible strategic choice.

The problem that disables us is merely political, as the Maghreb leaders are unwilling to meet; while the democratic deficit is still high in the Maghreb and the founding act of the AMU complicates things, namely in the Article 6 of the Treaty of Marrakech which stipulates that “the supreme institutional organ that has the authority to make decisions and to which all AMU institutions answer is the Council of Heads of State; its decisions require unanimity”. In other words, the five Heads of State of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia should agree on a decision before it can incur them all. Is the political will of the five men to establish the Arab Maghreb Union stronger than their political differences and the thorny issue of the Sahara? That’s an issue that undermines the AMU, which is already perceived as an empty shell.

Fortunately, we are still left with the economic field, with a market of approximately 100 million inhabitants, joint projects, bilateral and multilateral supportive partnerships, and good initiatives such as the establishment of the Maghreb Investment and Foreign Trade Bank (BMICE), whose capital is of 500 million dollars and which will contribute to developing inter-Maghreb cooperation, build a competitive and integrated economy, promote trade exchanges and promote the circulation of goods and capitals.

The IMF Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has supported the AMU and called to accelerate its implementation to enable joint projects that will contribute to overcoming political conflicts within the Union.

The Maghreb’s economic integration is the ultimate rescue to save the Arab Maghreb Union on which other bodies – such as the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM) – depend, if it’s not too much exaggerated to say so.