Greek Presidency held meeting on Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation

Senior Officials of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) met in Athens on 27 January. Delegations from the 28 member-states and the institutions of the EU, the Secretary General of the UfM, delegations from Albania, Algeria, Bosnia - Herzegovina, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya (as an observer), Mauritania, Montenegro, Monaco, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Turkey, as well as from the UfM institutional partners, such as the League of Arab States and the Euro-mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) attended the meeting.

The discussion focused on the preparation of a series of Ministerial Meetings in various sectors, such as industrial cooperation, environment and climate change, trade and information society. Ministerial Meetings have been recently relaunched in the framework of the UfM, after a pause of approximately two years. In the course of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, Greece is going to host a Ministerial Meeting on Environment and Climate Change, which has been scheduled to take place on 13 May 2014, back to back with the EU Informal Council on Environment, which will follow.

The Board of Governors of the Anna Lindh Euro-mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures - in which the member states of the UfM and Palestine participate - met on 28 January 2014 in Athens. The meeting focused on the Foundations’s Work Programme for the current year, as well as on the long-term planning for the next phase of the Foundation’s operation, which begins in 2015.

In addition, to mark its 10th anniversary, the Foundation hosted, at Zappeion Megaron, an event for the presentation of its new website. The event was attended by members of the Board of Governors, representatives of Civil Society Organizations participating in the Hellenic Network of the Anna Lindh Foundation and journalists.