European-Mediterranean cooperation as a bridge for economic and political development

The second edition of the EUROMENA Show, promoted with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and in collaboration with Casa Árabe, addressed the different challenges that society will face in the short and medium term. As a consequence of the spread of the COVID pandemic, today's society poses a series of challenges that must be addressed in terms of cooperation and neighbourhood between countries, and for this reason, the EUROMENA Show has been configured as the ideal space to provide an outlet for these new discussions. 

In this sense, the main blocks of the day revolved around the economy, the presentation of the report "The creation of Euro-Mediterranean bonds that do their job", women as agents of social change and the challenges posed by climate change.

The Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department of the International Monetary Fund, Jihad Azour, stated that "we need to help young people in the MENA region to create options for others (...) Europe should focus on this". The director went on to say that "we must allow MENA companies to operate in the EU without trade barriers, free trade is a key barrier to economic development".

On the other hand, the debate presented the main vectors for investment in Europe and Spain. For the president of the FNF, Karl-Heinz Paqué, the main focus is the lack of regional cooperation, "it is important that this cooperation is not only based on money but also on other factors, we have to achieve this entrepreneurial attitude".

Furthermore, he remarked that it is necessary to give opportunities to young people and to think about the future, as well as to implement "measures that are put in place to promote the social market in Mediterranean countries" since "there is no lack of talented people, but to build something and to have a vision, the countries of the MENA region have to realise that they have to improve the governance of their countries; the private and public sectors have to work in a complementary way".

At the launch of the report 'Creating Mediterranean bonds that deliver', David Henneberger expressed that "none of the objectives have been fully achieved, most of them - the shortcomings are enormous and the challenges have become greater".

Today, conflicts that already existed decades ago are mostly continuing, wars and civil wars around the Mediterranean are on the rise, some of the phenomena created by these trends, such as refugees, have grown, inequalities within and without have increased along with human rights problems and lack of freedoms along with illiberal tendencies.

This societal rapprochement has meant that 'the emotional gap between Europe and its southern neighbours has widened', according to Elcano Royal Institute director Charles Powell, 'given the objectives, it is undeniable that the EU and the southern Mediterranean partners have not succeeded'. In this respect, 'there is a sense of failure, a sense of fatigue and frustration, a sense of hopelessness in which the context has not helped - for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Eastern Mediterranean, the intervention of global actors, and so on'. 

On the other hand, the debate argued that one of the main reasons for this situation is the incoherence of discourses and the spread of the idea of simplification "as there is a perceived dilemma between values and interests; they clash and choices have to be made". In this line, "the EU has found itself trapped. On the one hand: if it is true to its values - it pushes for democratic reform; if it defends immediate interests there is a problem of defining interests that encompasses a false dichotomy between security and democratisation, short-term interests versus long-term goals, non-democratic regimes are comfortable with that dichotomy".

In this sense, two ideas are presented, one in which a deteriorated form of stability, lack of economic progress, increase of inequalities and social unrest, instrumentalisation of identity and another "critical re-evaluation of priorities" are carried out

The main researcher Eduard Soler i Lecha has raised the different futures for Euro-Mediterranean relations and stressed that we must "learn how to remain positive in an environment where political and social challenges are constantly emerging".

For Soler, "we can change our future, the report presents three alternative scenarios, and they are the result of the combination of the strengthening or weakening of ties around the Mediterranean", "if these ties are strong, what kind of ties will we have?"

The researcher went on to stress that it is "time to reflect and move forward, to see where we have failed and how we can do better" as "women continue to be marginalised, they continue to lack access to opportunities and legal rights, to which we must respond, what can we do as an organisation?"

Meanwhile, in the documentary 'Women Leading Protests', Lebanese journalist Luna Saufar and activist Masih Ali Nejad provided a series of statements in relation to various protests they have been involved in in a variety of countries where human rights are disregarded. According to Luna Saufar, "women have brought their daughters to the demonstrations demanding peace (...) in revolutions women embrace change from a maternal perspective in which they carry out the actions of caregivers". From this perspective Saufar encourages women to take part in demonstrations even when it is dangerous, as long as they can lead".

For Masih Ali Nejad, "we women are enemies of the government because we are changing the status quo and the mentality of the government". According to Nejad, "women must decide to be victims or warriors and they must unite because the governments' priority is to keep women out of politics".

Finally, the climate change debate has revolved around the dynamic that climate change is not perceived as a problem in the region. In this line, the EU has very ambitious initiatives to reverse the situation, as pointed out by the Director of TADAEEM Advisory Services, Iskander Ben Mustapha, who stated that "the green transition requires the modernisation of various sectors" in which capital can be mobilised for the green transition. This would be achieved through "tackling climate change related problems through direct funding" and through the "partnerships that we establish at national and EU level that are working within the framework of the Paris agreement as it allows countries to mobilise money to increase their own ambition to fund projects".

Lukas Köhler, FDP member of the German parliament, said that "we have countries that are investing money in hydrogen projects" where "we need to emphasise the specific frameworks that we will need to label something as green".

In this respect he stressed that "we have to invest in big projects with a lot of money as it can come from institutions, countries or private sectors consulting the scale of the need to address climate change; we are changing the whole economy of the whole world; you cannot say "let's do one thing and not the other" (not choosing between projects), you need to address them all".