Historia

First delegation: Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum

In 1998, the European Parliament sent a delegation to participate in the first Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum, held in Brussels. The Forum served as the parliamentary extension of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership launched in Barcelona in 1995.

A new delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly

The Forum's conversion into a genuine Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly was proposed in a European Parliament resolution in April 2002. The inaugural sitting for the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly was held in Greece in March 2004. Following this, the European Parliament constituted a Delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly in September 2004. The Delegation continued to participate in the Assembly's activities and was instrumental in establishing it as the parliamentary dimension of the Union for the Mediterranean, when the latter was created in 2008 at the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean. The Union represented an expansion of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, which had been instituted in 1995.

Final development: Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of the Mediterranean (PA-UfM)

At the sixth plenary meeting of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Amman in March 2010, the full name of the organisation was changed into "Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of the Mediterranean". The change underlined the Assembly's role as the parliamentary dimension of the Union for the Mediterranean. The Parliamentary Assembly had the objective to focus on democratic scrutiny and policy inputs. In response, the European Parliament's Delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly also changed its name. The new delegation, now officially the "Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (DMED)", became operational at a meeting on 22 September 2010. Since then the Delegation has been a driving force behind the Assembly's activities. On many occasions, the Delegation has spurred the Assembly to reform itself, even if the results achieved still fall short of the European Parliament's expectations.