Today more than ever, the Maghreb needs to accelerate its integration process. This is an imperative all the more urgent that the region has been facing significant challenges since the 2011 events that heralded the beginning of a decisive turning point, thus reiterating the claims of the peoples for equal distribution of growth dividends, greater democracy and respect for civil liberties, increased job opportunities and social development that is more inclusive and more responsive to the needs of all social categories.
Most countries in the region have experienced a groundswell of protest that challenged the development and governance paradigms put in place, since they have failed to meet expectations and address the challenges of employment, alleviating inequalities and achieving good governance. These protest mouvements were driven by the young in particular, thus reflecting the needs and aspirations of this social category which is one of the most critical to development, as well as the importance of the challenges the countries of the region are faced with. These issues are compounded by growing security threats; and all this combined impacts on UMA integration, currently faced with various challenges. Their persistence hinders the recovery of the region's economies and reduces their growth potential.
The following examples can easily illustrate this situation: intra-community trade represents only 3- 4% of total imports of the Member States, the establishment of free trade zone is experiencing a costly delay, the mobility of goods and people has achieved limited progress; and the current institutional framework is not sufficiently operational to facilitate and sustain multisectoral integration .
Questioning the existing development and governance models as seen in the region since 2011 has generated a series of political, economic and social reforms that require sustained support from UMA development partners, including ECA. Indeed, as part of its mission, the CEA has made of the promotion of regional integration one of the pillars of its work, and strives to assist countries and regional cooperation organisations in this effort, notably through its subregional offices.
In this context, three major activities led by the ECA Office for North Africa (ECA-NA) have marked the past three months, namely: i) a meeting with the UMA General Secretariat for the review of the 2014-2016 Multiyear Programme (MYP) held in 20 May; an Expert group meeting to explore the ways and means of providing UMA with an autonomous funding mechanism (12 June 2014); and iii) a Regional Consultative Meeting gathering UMA General Secretariat, the agencies of the UN system that cover North Africa , as well as many other partners ((24-25 June 2014).
The MYP meeting took into consideration the new development challenges facing the Maghreb region, as well as ECA's new orientations to promote economic prospection and analysis based on more elaborate statistics, and therefore more reliable. The activities of the new MYP covers three major themes: UMA capacity building; supporting structural transformation and promotion of the Maghreb economies, and supporting social development, with a particular focus on gender, youth and migration.
Achieving the regional integration objectives requires - as it is increasingly recognised today- the promotion of a real synergy between all regional efforts, but also the establishment of a more regular and autonomous funding scheme, as underlined by the expert group meeting ECA-NA has organised on this theme, which was also covered by a study the Office has coordinated to this effect. Indeed, analysing UMA's journey so far shows that its current financing system is more of an obstacle than a solution that can address the situation, as it obeys to the classical model of contributions sent by Member States from their national budgets. This has led to persistent budget shortfalls, hence the slow and uneven progress in the implementation of development projects that are meant to structure and strengthen integration, while boosting trade and regional cooperation.
The meeting on UMA autonomous funding scheme was an opportunity for experts to reflect on the best way to address this challenge and examine the possibility of providing UMA with a financing mechanism based on the establishment of fiscal levies on national expenditure. This levy would be seated, assessed and collected by national administrations on behalf of UMA, and would allow the Union to gain greater capacity for action, and better position itself at the continental and regional levels. The issues and challenges related to development and integration in the region have also been the topical theme of a high-level debate at the Consultative meeting (24-25 June) that brought together UMA General Secretariat, the UN agencies operating in North Africa and many other partners, such as the African Development Bank (ADB), the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the United Arab Industrial Development and Mining organisation (AIDMO), the Observatory of the Sahara and Sahel (OSS), the Islamic Centre for Development of Trade (ICDT), etc. This important consultation was part of the Regional Coordination Mechanism mandate (RCM-Africa), whose primary mission is to coordinate support for the implementation of the development and integration objectives in the Continent, such as defined by the NEPAD.
The consultation enabled partners to share their activities in support of UMA, reach a broad consensus on the scope and nature of the development challenges in the region, and jointly identify strategic areas of intervention to revitalize the integration process, as well as the establishment of a regional platform to support UMA, cushioned by a coordination mechanism in order to maximize the overall impact of the partners' action and interventions.
