• Institutions for intercultural dialogue and cooperation, religious representatives and interfaith organisations are working together to build mutual understanding in the Euro-Mediterranean region. This is the first meeting in a long-term action-oriented process that aims to strengthen organisational capacity and foster cooperation as a means of countering discrimination and intolerance. • Participants welcomed the meeting as an important opportunity to raise awareness of the substantial contribution that interreligious and intercultural dialogue can make to peace and security in the region…. read more
Luxembourg holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU for the second half of 2015. It is hosting an Informal Meeting of EU Ministers for Employment, their Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) counterparts and key stakeholders to tackle youth unemployment, which is a major political, economic and social challenge in the region. A Union for the Mediterranean Ministerial Meeting on Employment is expected to take place in 2016…. read more
Delphine Borione, UfM Deputy Secretary General, presented information about the UfM’s achievements and future activities to representatives of Member States at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She also shared an exchange with MEPs on regional cooperation in the Mediterranean within the context of a debate on the report on the future European neighbourhood policy (ENP)…. read more
Luxembourg, 29 June 2015. Under Luxembourg’s current Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Mr Fathallah Sijilmassi, Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, held a working session in Luxembourg with Mr Jean Asselborn, the country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. During the meeting, it was noted that the Luxembourg Presidency comes just as the European Union announces the new strategic axes of its Neighbourhood Policy to be implemented this autumn. Luxembourg’s Presidency also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Barcelona Process, the precursor to the UfM. During the meeting between Mr Sijilmassi and Mr Asselborn, it was… read more
Arab Mediterranean Ministers for Foreign Affairs called for a new era in the relation with the EU within the framework of the new European Neighborhood Policy. Participants noted the importance of the UFM and expressed support for its Secretariat…. read more
The organisation has presented its annual report to the European Parliament . The Secretary General of the UfM underlined the importance of the region’s security and socio-economic issues. Challenges relating to illegal immigration, youth unemployment and weak economic growth concern both the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries because they are challenges that are shared by all countries in the region and they require regional responses…. read more
Bratislava, 19 June 2015. UfM Secretary-General Fathallah Sijilmassi participated today at GLOBSEC 2015, which is being held in Bratislava from 19-21 June. Organised by the Slovak Atlantic Commission, GLOBSEC is a leading annual forum on security and foreign policy in Central Europe that gathers around 800 key security and foreign policy figures from both sides of the Atlantic each year. For the 2015 conference, the chairmanship has been assumed by H. E. Miroslav Lajčák, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic. In a panel session on “Europe’s Southern Neighbourhood: Only Threats or also Opportunities”,… read more
UfM Secretary General gives a lecture at the Natolin Campus of the College of Europe, in Warsaw, on existing challenges in the region, the interrelated nature of the challenges and the need to adopt a comprehensive and balanced approach to Euro-Mediterranean partnership in order to tackle them in a consistent manner…. read more
As part of its women empowerment strategy, UfM has labelled a leadership project called WoMED “next generation of leaders” for 22 young women from the Southern Mediterranean, which aims to improve their leadership capacities and gender equality skills. The project was launched at Sciences Po Paris on 1 June 2015 in the presence of Annick Girardin, Secretary of State for Development and Francophone Countries; Pascale Boistard, Secretary of State for Women’s Rights; Élisabeth Guigou, President of the National Assembly Committee for Foreign Affairs, President of the Anna Lindh Foundation and “godmother to the Class of 2015”; and Delphine Borione, Deputy… read more
The Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises (Businessmed) signed an agreement to strengthen the private sector’s contribution to socio-economic development in the Mediterranean region…. read more
