Mediterranean Programme - [11/17/2007]

José Antonio Alonso: “The Mediterranean needs a permanent construction”

For the second consecutive year, José Antonio Alonso, the Spanish Defence Minister, participated in the 6th Seminar on Security and Defence in the Mediterranean, organised by the CIDOB Foundation and the Ministry of Defence and held at the Palau de Pedralbes in Barcelona.

Alonso maintained that “the Mediterranean needs a permanent construction and a permanent appeal to values, especially when we find ourselves in extreme situations, committed to promoting the opposite”. The Spanish Defence Minister also stressed the point that “the European Union's security policy will have to focus increasingly on the Mediterranean”.

Spain's Minister of Defence also stated that Spain and Morocco’s collaboration with respect to security is not in any danger, in spite of the “dispute” that has arisen over the Spanish monarchs' visit to Ceuta and Melilla. Alonso also added that “security in Maghreb is of key importance for world stability”.

The seminar was inaugurated by the president of the CIDOB Foundation, Narcís Serra, who emphasised the importance of human security. “Security is not guaranteed by merely thinking of it as a problem of the State, but only by considering that it also affects citizens”.

In addition to the addresses by Alonso and Serra, the seminar was also attended by experts from different disciplines and parts of the world, and who analysed the present and future of security and defence in the Mediterranean. These included: Shlomo Ben-Ami, Vice-President of the Toledo International Centre for Peace, Madrid; Joao Mira Gomes, Secretary of State for Defence and Maritime Affairs of Portugal; Mario Rino Me, Admiral and President of the 5+5 from theMinistry of Defence for Italy; Alberto Bin, Coordinator of NATO's Regional Issues and Mediterranean Dialogue; Álvaro de Vasconcelos, Director of the Institute of Security Studies of the European Union (ISS-EU) of Paris; Fred Halliday, Professor of International Relations at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies (IBEI) and Meliha Altunisik, Professor of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara.

At this year's seminar, the participants debated a series of issues, including cooperation initiatives on security in the Mediterranean, the security scenarios that exist in the region and human security.

After an analysis of the different cooperation initiatives on security, it was concluded that progress can be made more easily if more specific issues are dealt with, and if this is implemented on a sub-regional scale. However, the need to maintain a political dialogue on a Euro-Mediterranean level was also highlighted.

On the subject of security scenarios, the Arab-Israeli situation was viewed as one of the most important points of conflict. Even so, several speakers stressed that Mediterranean security should also bear in mind the various disputes in neighbouring areas such as the Sahel area and Iraq, as well as the growing influence of Iran in the region. Mention was also made of globalisation as being a causal factor in the widening of conflicts in the Mediterranean. The emergence of new actors that have not yet forged alliances was mentioned as another possible destabilising element.

Meanwhile, on the subject of human security, the participants debated aspects such as the links between fundamental freedoms and security, civil-military cooperation in humanitarian missions and the reform of the security sector. Emphasis was placed on the need to make progress in protecting citizens from all kinds of abuses, from social economic injustices and from the consequences of the natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, forest fires, etc.) that so frequently wreak havoc in the Mediterranean region.

The seminar ─ which continues to exist as a space for dialogue, in order to discuss and foster the adoption of cooperation strategies ─ first sprang from an initiative developed in 2002 as a joint collaboration between the CIDOB and the Spanish Ministry of Defence, within the framework of Spain's Presidency of the European Union. The annual event represents an attempt to analyse regional cooperation initiatives and to debate the main challenges to security in the Mediterranean.

>> See programme (pdf 138kB)