HM The King’s Atlantic initiative opens the way to the co-construction of a Europe-Africa macro-region (former French MEP)
Paris – The Atlantic initiative launched by His Majesty King Mohammed VI opens the way to the co-construction of a Europe-Africa macro-region, stressed former French MEP Florence Kuntz.
This initiative “opens the way for a North-South dialogue and cooperation that could benefit, in the next European legislature, from a new dynamism through an Atlantic Arc linking Europe and Africa”, wrote Ms Kuntz, a consultant in institutional strategies and European public affairs in a column published on Monday by the African economic news agency “Africapresse.paris”. The former MEP and member of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly advocates in this context for the creation of an Atlantic Arc “that Africa could extend tomorrow, in the dynamic created by Morocco’s Atlantic initiative, aiming to share with its neighbors on the African Atlantic coast – and with the landlocked Sahelian states – a high place of human communion, a pole of economic integration and a center of continental and international influence”. For Ms. Kuntz, “with a common ocean, common challenges… promoting the co-construction of responses to the challenges of coastal regions”, citing among the “emblematic infrastructures” of this major project, the Atlantic Port of Dakhla which “offers a gateway to the African continent and an attractive hub for foreign investors, particularly within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area”. Another project, adds the French expert, is the Nigeria-Morocco Atlantic gas pipeline, running along the West African coast. Ms. Kuntz also sees in certain upcoming deadlines favorable opportunities for co-constructions such as the Football World Cup, which will consecrate, in 2030, a co-organization on the two continents, African and European and which constitutes “an extraordinary tool of Atlantic soft power, which will generate a multitude of economic and logistical projects between now and the competition”. For her, all this opens up the prospects of “a favorable agenda to promote in Brussels an initiative for Europe-Africa Atlantic cooperation. Especially since a new European mandate is starting, and all the players in the Atlantic Arc, weakened by Brexit and undoubtedly threatened by a shift of the European Union towards the East, agree on wanting to give a new dimension to the Atlantic Maritime Strategy.” And to conclude that “with its initiative for Atlantic Africa, the Kingdom is also working to strengthen the links between the two continents. It is up to the future leaders of the EU to also set their sights on the Atlantic!”
2024-08-28 07:02:26