FT.com: Sarkozy dilutes plans for Mediterranean bloc (March 5 2008)

Nicolas Sarkozy has watered down his plans to set up a union of Mediterranean states, instead agreeing with his German counterpart to revitalise an existing European Union initiative.

Speaking after a dinner with Angela Merkel, the ­German chancellor, in Hanover on Monday night, the French president said his project would now involve all 27 EU member states and would be embedded in the Barcelona Process - a framework of political and economic agreements between the EU and 10 states around the Mediterranean launched in 1995.

The concession amounts to a climbdown by Mr Sarkozy, who initially wanted to establish a smaller and more "operational" group of states bordering the Mediterranean to give impetus to political and economic co-operation.