Italian Chamber of Deputies President Calls for ‘Marshall Plan for North Africa’

PRESS RELEASE

Italian Chamber of Deputies President Calls for ‘Marshall Plan for North Africa’

June 7, 2016 (EIRNS)—The President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, called for a Marshall Plan for the Mediterranean on May 30.

"Now is the time for Europe to come up with a grand strategic plan that can combine intermediate and long-term vision with significant economic resources and political commitment,"

Boldrini wrote in a Facebook post, after she and Senate President Pietro Grasso were handed the presidency of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (PA-UfM). The UfM is an intergovernmental organization of 43 countries from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin: the 28 member-states of the European Union and 15 Mediterranean partner-countries from North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Europe.

We took the leadership "in the most difficult, critical and dangerous moment for our region's northern and southern shores," Boldrini said.

"It's time for a 'Marshall Plan' for the Euro-Mediterranean area and for Africa. I don't say so out of generosity, or a utopian wish—I say so because this is in the interests of all.

"If we Europeans don't invest in the stability of the countries that face the Mediterranean, they will destabilize us."

Mrs. Boldrini's call for a Marshall Plan is welcome. But in order to be credible, the Italian Deputies' president should also issue a mea culpa for previously supporting regime-change policies in Libya and Syria, and for her unconditional support for the so-called "EU integration process," which has half-destroyed Europe with Brüning-style austerity policies.