Madam Speaker addresses Preliminary Meeting of the CSCM in Monaco

A Maltese delegation, led by Madam Speaker, the Hon. Myriam Spiteri Debono and consisting of the Hon. George Vella, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Environment and the Hon Richard Muscat, has just returned from Monaco after attending the 1st Preliminary Meeting to the IIIrd Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean with the theme:

"Adjustment of national employment policies and strengthening of international cooperation on such policies in the Mediterranean, with a view to development which generates jobs as a way of strengthening regional stability"

The following is the intervention made by the Hon. Spiteri Debono during the debate:

"Unless the right to work is to become a privilege and remain no longer a right we have to re-think the whole concept of employment. We have to examine what employment means, what economic activity means from the point of view of the provider and the receiver, the hours of work, the conditions of work, whether it is pertinent in certain circumstances to examine the notion of job-sharing.

The number of individuals aspiring to a job is set to increase, not merely because of population changes, but also because of cultural changes, especially women's continued emancipation in different countries.

The Mediterrranean is a diverse cultural basin and the different cultures, the different perceptions, even the different legal and political systems, make it more important that we, around this table, find a common denominator. And this common denominator should be the recognition that there exist human rights which are more basic than our different perceptions of what may be termed political human rights, namely the basic needs of each and every human being to a decent standard of living, the right to education, the right to good health, the right to adequate housing, the right of the individual, woman or man, to the realisation of her/his full potential.

Each and every state has the duty to empower its population towards the achievment of a decent standard of living and each nation must needs start by making its own national assessment of its resources, its economic situation and try to find the solutions pertinent to its problems.

However, our common citizenship of the Mediterranean region also necessitates that we find ways of mutual support, mutual support based on our common aim of stability and security in the Mediterranenan, looked at from the grass root level, from the level of each man, woman and child inhabiting this region in such a way that we should start aiming at eradicating misery and hardship rather than creating places of refuge from human misery.

In order to do this, it is imperative that we in the countries around the Mediterranean institutionalize the concept of ongoing dialogue and cooperation by the setting up of a Council of the Mediterranean, if we ever aspire to develop our interdependence in such a way as to make it the very basis of our common strenghts."