BRUSSELS, Feb 08, 2011 (AFP) - European Parliament MPs called Tuesday for an international donors' conference to be held for Tunisia, as it undergoes its democratic transition after the ouster of leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
A delegation of lawmakers, who travelled to the north African country between February 3 and 6, told foreign affairs and human rights committees at the parliament late on Monday that a donors' conference should be convened.
In a parliamentary statement, they highlighted youth unemployment estimated as high as 50 percent and a 40 percent tourism revenue slump.
Maltese conservative MEP Simon Bussutil called for the drawing up of a broad 'Marshall Plan,' and not just a financial envelope, "to help those that have taken the road of democracy."
That was a reference to the international restructuring aid drawn up in response to the ruins of post-WWII Europe.
Finnish Greens representative Heidi Hautala said the European Union, the United Nations and other international actors should coordinate their aid.
Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a former Solidarity activist in Communist Poland, said north Africa faces "the same difficult and scarcely navigable path" to democracy as eastern and central Europe 20 years ago.
Spain's Carmen Romero Lopez called for "European Central Bank credit guarantees" to be offered.
Chief EU diplomat Catherine Ashton was in New York on Tuesday for UN talks, as British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Tunisia at the start of his three-day visit to north Africa and the Middle East.
The English baroness has been criticised for not travelling to Tunisia or Egypt quicker.
No formal date has yet been communicated, although a spokeswoman for Ashton said the High Representative would visit "the region" over the course of "next week."
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Copyright AFP 2011.
