Working seminar on 25-27 June 2009 : the beginning of the operational phase

The programme’s first working seminar was organized on 25, 26 and 27 June in Paris and centred on instigating the programme’s operational component. The main objective was to agree on the method, implementation schedule and division of tasks, and thus define the common working programme for the forthcoming months. 

The residential seminar was designed to provide participants with time for discussion as well as the opportunity to get to know each other, and this was an important factor in helping the programme accomplish its two objectives, i.e.: in the short term, co-signature by the various partners of a common document to be handed to Heads of State when they gather at the second UfM Summit in the summer of 2010; and in the long term, setting up a close collaboration between the different institutions that focus on forecasting in the Mediterranean region. As a result, the quality of the contributions and discussions, as well as the atmosphere of conviviality and trust that prevailed during the three days meant that the seminar was a genuine success.

During this technical seminar, exchanges and debates rich in teachings were realized as regards the various models of regional integration available and on the questions of quantification modelling of such an approach. The euro-Mediterranean organizations presented the thematic analyses on food security and agriculture, population and mobility, human capital, environment, energy and transports.

At the operational level, three working groups were established :

-          Shared values in the Mediterranean
-          Regional integration in the Mediterranean
-          Modelling and integrating sectoral forecasts

Given that participants agree on most of the thematic analyses presented during this seminar on food security and agriculture, population and mobility, the environment, and energy and human capital, the 2030 thematic forecasts will be piloted and consolidated by bodies that carry out sectorial Euro-Mediterranean studies, and then completed, reviewed, amended and validated by national stakeholder institutions during a plenary meeting in early 2010. Although the focus will be five specific forecast studies, participants agree that their objective will be to make them interact.

Piloting of the thematic forecasts will be shared out as follows:

-          Energy: Mediterranean Energy Observatory (OME)
-          Human capital and employment: FEMISE
-          Population and migration: CARIM in collaboration with Hervé Le Bras
-          Food security and agriculture: CIHEAM

The seminar also confirmed an essential point: that of integrating the same geographic reference framework into all Mediterranean 2030 work, which mainly involves systematically integrating data on the Adriatic countries, or the “Balkans” (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia), Mauritania, Portugal and Jordan, and a privileged perspective regarding the European Union and the Gulf States, Asia and North America.