The government does not separate Malta’s future, including its economic and social future, from a strong dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean zone, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday told a meeting of the European People’s Party and the Regions Committee, held at the Radisson SAS Bay Point Hotel in St Julian’s.

The meeting was discussing dialogue between local and regional authorities.

Dr Gonzi said the government had drawn up a vision for the country which looked to 2015, by which time Malta wanted to excel in six sectors. These included information technology, educational services, and health services, he said. They saw the expansion of these specialisations in Malta in the background of developments they wished for the Mediterranean.

For instance, he pointed out, the educational and health services they wanted to offer in the region could not be fully successful if there were not good relations, based on reciprocal trust and prosperity, security and cooperation between the governments in the region.

In the technological sector they had set up a corporation, the EuroMedITI, whose aim was to work on regional projects of cooperation which could develop technologies adapted to the various social and cultural contexts existing in the Mediterranean.

Dr Gonzi said they had chosen these aims not only as part of their economic plan – they saw in them the way of living Malta’s particular vocation in a globalised world. They hoped that through these aims, and through EU and Commonwealth membership, they could contribute to the development of Africa, helping it to overcome the economic challenges it faced.

But the idea of a Euro Mediterranean as a communications net spread over the two ends of the sea would lack something important if they did not add dialogue between regional and local authorities.