#ARLEM Local leaders say: Cities and regions crucial to stabilization of Mediterranean

Practical co-operation at a local level is essential if countries around the Mediterranean are to manage challenges created by the conflicts in Syria and Libya, migration and climate change, local political leaders from the Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) said on 19 January.

"The sources of tension and instability in the Mediterranean are the type that require sustained, very concrete cooperation," said Markku Markkula, president of the European Committee of the Regions and co-president of ARLEM, which brings together local politicians from the European Union and countries around the Mediterranean.

His fellow president, Hani Abdelmasih, mayor of Beit Sahour in Palestine, said that "our cities need to go beyond our cooperation to date. For instance, the new European Neighbourhood Policy should provide greater prominence to local authorities than they have now."

ARLEM’s annual assembly, which was held in Nicosia, Cyprus, adopted eight recommendations and two reports, on urban development and access to jobs, intended to shape policies adopted by the European Union and states around the Mediterranean.

Eleni Loucaidou, deputy mayor of Nicosia and author of the report on employment, placed particular stress on "fighting unfair prejudices that affect the status of women in the labour market" and said that "equal rights for women should be increasingly considered a key precondition" of EU funding.

Fawzi Masad, who is responsible for the running of Jordan's capital Amman and authored the report on an urban agenda for the Mediterranean adopted by ARLEM today, said that social trends – including the fast-increasing urbanisation in the southern and eastern Mediterranean – required cities to build up their "resilience" and to generate more jobs.

Members of ARLEM also agreed on initiatives in the form of studies, projects and political collaboration in the areas of migration, public administration, energy and climate action, and women’s rights.

There were also specific preliminary offers of support for municipalities in Libya, which was represented for the first time in ARLEM. The mayor of Tripoli, Abdelrauf Beitelmal, identified administrative capacity, health care, transport, policing, waste management and early education as areas where Libya’s local administrations could particularly benefit from the backing of EU cities and regions. The mayor of Nicosia, Constantinos Yiorkadjis, proposed a platform through which EU local authorities could coordinate and channel their support for Libya.

Mr Markkula backed the idea, on behalf of the European Committee of the Regions, and said the reaction of the EU’s local and regional authorities vindicated the trust that Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, places in cities as a potential stabilising force in Libya.

The strain imposed on thousands of communities across Europe and the Mediterranean region by the movement of millions of refugees and migrants was a recurrent theme at the assembly. Mr Markkula welcomed the proposal of a job programme for refugees devised by Eurochambres, an association of businesses from across the EU.

The scale of the challenge posed by the upsurge in the number of refugees and migrants in recent years was underlined in presentations by three United Nations agencies. Raghed Assi of the UN Development Programme drew particular attention to the situation in Lebanon, which he said has the highest per-capita refugee population in the world. Lebanon is "defying gravity", he warned.

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