Rome, Italy, 28 September 2026. Water Ministers from the 43 UfM member states meet in Rome, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on 28 September 2026 for the Second UfM Ministerial Meeting on Water, nine years after the first Ministerial in Malta set the UfM Water Agenda in motion. The meeting takes place back to back with the Euro-Mediterranean Water Forum (Rome, 29 September to 2 October 2026) and comes at a moment when water scarcity and climate pressure are reshaping priorities across the region.

Ministers will review progress on the UfM Water Agenda, set the direction for regional cooperation to 2030 and adopt a package of documents that has been under negotiation for more than a year.

The First UfM Ministerial Meeting on Water took place in Malta on 27th April 2017. It approved the UfM Ministerial Declaration on Water, which mandated the UfM Regional Platform on Water to elaborate and implement the UfM Water Agenda, and an accompanying financial strategy, through a medium/long term work programme and biannual work plans.

The centrepiece of the meeting will be the adoption of the Second UfM Ministerial Declaration on Water, setting out the region’s ambition and priorities for the water related Sustainable Development Goals over the period 2026 to 2030.

Ministers will also endorse 3 strategic frameworks approved at the 15th Meeting of the UfM Regional Platform on Water in Barcelona in November 2025. The Strategy for the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems Nexus in the Mediterranean Source to Sea Continuum, developed by the UfM, UNEP MAP and the European Union with the support of GWP Med, EU WES BCA project and PRIMA, takes a cross sectoral approach to managing water, energy, food and ecosystems from the source to the sea, and was also adopted by the Barcelona Convention COP24. The UfM Recommendations on Water Finance gather in one accessible document the guidance built up since 2019 through the Annual Conferences on Water Finance and Investment and the UN 2023 Water Conference, covering everything from national finance strategies to tariffs, climate finance and the role of public development banks and the private sector. The UfM Regional Strategic Framework for the Digitalisation of the Water Sector responds to a fast moving opportunity for the region and is already in implementation, including a regional capacity building webinar series on water and artificial intelligence delivered in 2025 and 2026.

Around these outcomes, the meeting will offer a high level exchange among Ministers and partner institutions on national progress, on the priorities for regional cooperation until 2030, and on how to keep the UfM Regional Platform on Water effective and efficient. The discussion is framed by an evolving policy context, in particular the EU Water Resilience Strategy adopted in June 2025 and the Pact for the Mediterranean.

Ministers will launch the Rome Initiative on Water, as a proof of their collective commitment to work together to advance towards their common water goals, and as a practical arm of the Declaration and a Mediterranean contribution to the UN 2026 Water Conference in the United Arab Emirates.

The Initiative has two objectives: building the technical capacities countries need to address the priorities identified in the Declaration, incuidng for the development of comprehensive water management and investment planning, and facilitating the design, financing and management of sustainable projects. It is designed to help translate national ambitions into feasible project pipelines that can attract blended finance, working through existing structures rather than creating new ones, and building on the frameworks established by the EU Water Resilience Strategy and the Pact for the Mediterranean.

The UfM will lead the further development of the initiative, with the UfM Regional Platform on Water overseeing its implementation. 

The Ministerial Meeting is immediately followed by the Euro-Mediterranean Water Forum, held at La Nuvola in Rome from 29 September to 2 October 2026. The UfM is a co-organiser of the Forum alongside the One Water Committee Italy and the Mediterranean Water Institute (IME), and the two events are designed to work together: the political direction set by Ministers on 28 September feeds straight into four days of technical, scientific and business exchange, with the One Water Expo as the central feature and the Festival dell’Acqua running in parallel.