Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will today present fellow European leaders with a proposal for a Mediterranean Union that leaves unanswered sensitive questions about how the scheme would operate.

According to a FrancoGerman document obtained by the Financial Times, the Mediterranean Union will seek to strengthen cooperation among the European Union's 27 member states and non-EU, mainly Muslim, countries in north Africa and the Middle East.