REALPOLITIK: Trevor Royle

IT had to happen. No sooner had Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced his plans to create a Union of the Mediterranean than the wags in Europe's diplomatic community dubbed it France's Club Med. In fact it's a tad more grandiose than that. Today, Sarkozy will crown his country's presidency of the European Union by hosting a meeting of 44 EU, Balkan, north African and Middle Eastern leaders, who will sit down in the Grand Palais in Paris to inaugurate the new organisation, which is designed to stimulate regional wellbeing in the Mediterranean.

It's not a particularly novel idea. The Roman Empire regarded the Mediterranean as its own property - mare nostrum: "our sea" - to be defended and cultivated, and in more recent times the EU started the Barcelona Process in 1995 with the object of bringing some coherence to the area. The main principles underpinning the plan were: to clean up the pollution which blights the Mediterranean Sea; to promote the use of solar power in the region; and to develop the necessary infrastructure to improve trading routes.

In common with many other ostentatious EU schemes, the process was more blather than action and so far it has achieved nothing of any substance. Wiseacres claim that Sarkozy's latest ruse will go much the same way - that it's too elephantine and unfocused to achieve anything positive; that it's just another opportunity to schmooze, drink fine French wines and make pretentious toasts to a new spirit of friendship and co-operation.

On one level, today's meeting will be just that - how else can the wheels of diplomacy be lubricated? But on another level, Sarkozy's plan is not to be sneezed at. For far too long the EU has looked on the crescent-shaped sea as a natural, if awkward, border which has to be guarded against the rising tide of illegal immigrants from north Africa, or as a bulwark against a perceived Islamic threat from the eastern coastline of the Levant. Instead of embracing the possibilities created by this geostrategic contiguity, the EU has tended to shun them.

Not any more: Sarkozy's ambitious plans include the development of solar energy in sun-rich north Africa; the further extension of a massive container port outside Tangiers; and the creation of trading links to generate regional development and security along the EU's southern shores.

Then there is the political aspect. Quite apart from dealing with the bread-and-butter issues, the new union will also be bringing together some weighty sparring partners.

Sitting down at the same table will be the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert and the Syrian president, Bashar Assad. Although it's far from clear if they will break bread together, the very fact that they will be in the same room together is progress of sorts. Divided as they are by the issue of the Golan Heights - which Damascus wants to be returned - and support for Hezbollah, which Jerusalem wants to be ended, it will be a miracle if the two men even shake hands.

Other rivals at the same table will be King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, neither of whose countries could be described as bosom buddies. There are some refuseniks: unsurprisingly, Libya's president, Muammar Gaddafi, will not be coming, while Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has only said that he might be coming. Gaddafi has denounced the initiative as a new imperialist plot, while Erdogan is in the huff because he believes the new union might stymie Turkey's application to join the EU.

Then there are the northern Europeans who really should have no business to be in Paris today. In the plan's original form, Sarkozy wanted to limit membership to those countries which shared a Mediterranean coastline, but that was quickly torpedoed by the Germans. The cynics might say that they wanted to be the first to bag the beach chairs, but there is a more pragmatic reason: Germany's tough-talking chancellor, Angela Merkel, saw the Mediterranean union as a French ploy to create a new bloc to counterbalance her own country's influence over the recent influx of eastern European members.

She's probably right, but as result the new grouping already has a cumbersome look and it will take a great deal of effort to demonstrate that it actually serves a useful purpose. Much will depend on the French input into the secretariat, which is being shared with Egypt. If it can cut through unnecessary legislation and channel funds into improving the infrastructures in north Africa and the eastern littoral, it could provide much-needed trading opportunities for the countries involved.

If it fails to do anything tangible and turns into another expensive talking shop, then you can bet your last franc that the man blamed for the fiasco will be its creator, the increasingly Gaullist French president.