Is there sufficient common interest between the EU and the Southern and Eastern countries of the
Mediterranean to support a special relationship?

The EuroMed 2030 Expert Group on “Forward looking on the long term challenges for the Mediterranean area“, established by the European Commission under the Foresight activity of the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) of the 7th Research Framework Programme, takes into account the differences and the difficulties that the region as a whole is facing, but also aims to go beyond them and explore the potential of the Mediterranean cooperation by the year 2030.

The Expert group aims to identify “trends, tensions and transitions” in the Euro-Mediterranean space.

In “trends” they examine the way in which critical issues in the region are evolving and how they might develop over the next twenty years. The themes addressed are: demographic and macroeconomic trends, water shortage and its impact on agriculture, energy and climate change, education, science and innovation, religion and culture, geopolitics and governance.

“Tensions” consider how these trends will interact to generate stresses at different socio-political levels: tensions among social groups, between hostile States, between competing visions of the State and competing visions of reform, between divergent expectations of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation.

“Transitions” explore some options for intervention to correct malign tensions and benefit from benign ones. The particular choice of the “transitions” is based on four themes of cooperation: avoiding conflict; win-win solutions; deeper economic integration and eventually moving to a Euro-Med Community.

The report on Forward looking on the long term challenges for the Mediterranean area was discussed in the homonymous conference on December 16th, 2010, Brussels, and will be further enriched.

More information

• SSH, Forward looking activities: http://ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/forward-looking_en.html