The UfM Regional Platform on Trade and Investment convenes its second meeting in 2021

• The UfM Regional Platform on Trade and Investment convened its second meeting in 2021 by videoconference.

16 December 2021. The 42 Member States of the Union for the Mediterranean convened today by videoconference for the second meeting of the UfM Regional Platform on Trade and Investment. They followed up on the planned work agreed upon at the previous meeting in July 2021, encompassing three main pillars of Sustainable Trade, Sustainable Investment and Regional Integration, along the lines of the Joint Declaration by UfM Trade Ministers of November 2020.

The meeting of the platform was chaired by the UfM Co-Presidency, the European Commission (DG TRADE) and Jordan (Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply), and the discussions under the three pillars covered the following:

• Sustainable Trade: participants discussed the EU Farm to Fork strategy for sustainable food systems, the state of play of implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement in the UfM region and initiatives to improve transparency of trading requirements for economic operators. They also reviewed analytical and policy work by the international Trade Centre on means to alleviate the impact of non-tariff measures to trade on regional trade.

• Sustainable Investment: participants discussed the results of a European Investment Bank enterprise survey on climate investments as well as environmental, social and good governance practices by companies in the UfM region.

• Regional Integration: participants welcomed preparations in view of a new regional Team Europe Initiative on jobs through trade and investment in the Southern Neighbourhood. They also took stock of the state of play on the modernization of Pan-Euro-Mediterranean rules of origin, and work carried out under the UfM aegis to disseminate information on the new transitional rules to stakeholders in the UfM region (workshops, preparation of handbooks, etc.)

The meeting also included an update on the activities of the UfM Secretariat, implemented with the financial support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany (BMZ). This notably included the organization of the third edition of the UfM Trade and Investment Forum on 11 November 2021.

The UfM Member States agreed to hold the next meeting of the UfM Regional Platform on Trade and Investment during the second quarter of 2022.