French minister meets Tonio Borg

The two ministers exchanged views on a number of issues of mutual interest including the current unrest in the North African region in particular Libya, the future of the Union for the Mediterranean, and about Franco-Maltese bilateral relations.

Besson, who is the first French Minister to visit Malta since the beginning of the Libyan crisis, commended and underlined the excellent cooperation between France and Malta in the humanitarian evacuation of persons from Libya and thanked Malta for dealing effectively with the three separate incidents where French military jets were forced to perform emergency landings at the Malta International Airport.  

During the course of the visit by Minister Besson, Malta and the French Republic will also be formally concluding an Agreement on the reciprocal holding of security stocks of crude oil, intermediate oil products and petroleum products.

In virtue of   this agreement Malta will now be in a position of fulfilling its requirements in terms of EU directive 2006/67/EC of 24^th July 2006 which obliges the European Union Member States to hold minimum stocks of crude oil and/or petroleum products, of at least 90 days average daily internal consumption.