Spanish Foreign Minister Joins Senior Officials to Bid Farewell to UfM Secretary General Nasser Kamel
Barcelona, 10 June 2026, Barcelona – The Union for the Mediterranean held its Senior Officials Meeting today in Barcelona, bringing together senior representatives from its 43 Member States under the Co-Presidency of the European Union and Jordan. The meeting served as a formal occasion to bid farewell to outgoing Secretary General Nasser Kamel after eight years of service, an occasion marked by the participation of José Manuel Albares, Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain.
Delivering his final address as Secretary General, Nasser Kamel offered a candid assessment of both the organisation’s achievements and the challenges that still lie ahead. Reflecting on his eight years at the helm of the UfM, he warned that the international environment had shifted in ways difficult to imagine when he took office, with multilateral commitments increasingly questioned and, in some cases, deliberately dismantled. This, he stressed, was not a passing turbulence but a structural challenge to the idea that countries bear responsibilities towards one another.
Against that backdrop, he argued that conflicts across the region, their cascading consequences, and the suffering they continue to inflict, together with the Mediterranean’s shared challenges, make the case for multilateral action more urgent than ever. Referring to water scarcity, extreme heat, flash flooding, youth unemployment, energy insecurity, and widening economic and demographic disparities, he underlined that none of these challenges respect borders or yield to bilateral solutions.
Secretary General Kamel identified three priorities for the UfM requiring sustained attention: governance, resources, and meaningful Member State engagement. He urged Member States to make fuller use of the UfM’s platforms and ministerial meetings, warning that too many were still favouring bilateral pathways over the multilateral architecture they had built together. He directed a particular appeal to the Co Presidency, calling on Jordan and the European Union to use their unique leverage more actively, while acknowledging that the Secretariat itself must continue to earn the trust placed in it.
He closed his speech stating: “I leave this post more convinced than ever that the Mediterranean deserves better than what we have so far been willing to give it.”
Senior Officials also held a regional political dialogue covering key issues affecting the Mediterranean. They also heard presentations from the five newly appointed Deputy Secretaries General on their respective areas of work, reflecting the breadth of the UfM’s sectoral engagement across the region and the synergies between the organisation’s actions with that of the Pact for the Mediterranean.
In that respect, the meeting included an update from the European Commission on the Pact for the Mediterranean, with discussion of its Action Plan and the UfM’s role in its implementation. Discussions also tackled the organisation’s ongoing reform, with a review presented by the UfM Senior Deputy Secretary General. Preparations for the upcoming UfM Water Ministerial were also on the agenda, with Senior Officials holding consultations on the way forward.
On governance, Senior Officials exchanged views on leadership continuity following Secretary General Kamel’s departure.
The meeting closed with remarks by Minister Albares, who also held a bilateral meeting with Secretary General Kamel on the margins. The Minister expressed his appreciation for Kamel’s commitment to the Mediterranean project, which he said had played a fundamental role in shaping the UfM over recent years, and recognised his work in making the organisation a key element of the Euro-Mediterranean agenda. In his address, he reaffirmed Spain’s unwavering commitment to the UfM, underlined the organisation’s unique value as a forum for dialogue and cooperation across all Mediterranean partners, and called for deeper partnership in the period ahead.
