Euro-Med media co-operation began in 1993 and continued in a limited form until the end of the decade. Two projects, Remfoc in the Maghreb run by Ahmed Bedjaoui and Jemstone in the Mashreq, carried on with special funding after the rest had been suspended. In the third of a series of articles reproduced here the Jemstone Director, Tudor Lomas, pays tribute to the prescience of the European Union and laments its lack of commitment and stamina.

Amman is the base for the European Union’s biggest media training and development project in the Mediterranean region, called Jemstone. It runs workshops, seminars, courses, exchange visits and consultancy assignments for the media throughout the area, dealing with both the craft skills of journalism and the media and underlying concepts such as freedom of speech and the role of the media in a democratic society. The Jemstone Director, Tudor Lomas, a former BBC journalist, comments on Jordan’s proposed new press and publication law.

After three years of running Europe’s biggest media venture in the Euro-Med region, the Jemstone Director, Tudor Lomas, identifies the confusions at the heart of the Med-Media project and describes some of the lessons he’s learned for future media co-operation (the article was first published in early 1998 in the magazine Rive).