Jobs through Trade and Investment: Boosting employment in the Southern Mediterranean
- The 2023 UfM Trade and Investment Forum is the Forum’s 5th edition in five successive years, attesting to the emphasis the UfM places on facilitating trade and promoting investment to foster economic development and integration in the region.
- The Forum comes at a time when global economic, political and humanitarian disruptions are posing serious challenges that call for a regionally coordinated response that is innovative, sustainable and inclusive.
4 December 2023, Brussels – This year’s edition of the UfM Trade and Investment Forum, co-organised with the German Development Cooperation and made possible by the UfM Regional Platform on Trade and Investment, focused on addressing pressing cooperation needs. Regional trade integration and promoting investment are priority action areas for the Union for the Mediterranean and are at the heart of the UfM Hub for Jobs, Trade and Investment (2022-2025).
Discussions were guided by the pillars of the regional Team Europe Initiative “Jobs through Trade and Investment in the Southern Neighbourhood”, which was presented by the European Commission and EU Member States. The forum provided participants with a unique opportunity to discuss the initiative’s three priorities for the Southern Mediterranean: sustainable trade and investment, vocational training and skills, and inclusive entrepreneurship.
This year’s edition brought together over 100 participants including a broad spectrum of high-level speakers, partners and stakeholders from different sectors of the Euro-Mediterranean region to discuss the current regional economic dynamics in a changing global context.
“In the Southern Mediterranean, we have the opportunity to create a virtuous cycle where increased trade leads to sustainable job creation, improved living standards, and ultimately, enhanced social and political stability, which is an overarching goal of the UfM,” UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel stated.
The Executive Vice-President for an Economy that Works for People and European Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis touched on the common challenges and recent disruptions in the region, stressing the need to leverage trade to alleviate poverty, close the skills gap, implement trade agreements, and address the pressing issue of food and energy security, as well as to invest in green and just transition.
The key recommendations from the UfM Trade and Investment Forum will feed into the preparation work for the next UfM Ministerial on Trade, expected to take place in 2024. Since its first edition in 2019, the UfM Trade and Investment Forum has become a well-established dialogue platform addressing the most pressing issues and the current dynamics in trade and investment in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
