It is a pleasure for me to participate as Chairman of the Advisory Council in this Mediterranean Week and also to do so in the city of Barcelona. Years ago I had the opportunity to devote part of my political energies to the Mediterranean, to political-economic, social and cultural cooperation between the countries on either side of the Mediterranean, then, as Vice-President of the European Institute of the Mediterranean. Today, as I said before, I do so from a different responsibility, but with the same interest and the same faith in the potential of our Mediterranean Sea and, at the same time, the need to express all its potential and solve the problems it has, which are many.

The MedaWeek Advisory Council, which I have chaired since last year, was an initiative of the Association of the Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASCAME), and our friend the President of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Miquel Valls. The Advisory Council represents economic, political and social sectors on both sides of the Mediterranean through its members. It is an instrument that must be effective, and that is our objective, for promoting plans, activities and initiatives in favour of the Mediterranean; one of them, MedaWeek Barcelona, based in Barcelona, is not the only one, but it is very important.

Barcelona, as you know, has a Mediterranean vocation, a vocation as the capital of the Mediterranean. In Barcelona, the so-called Barcelona Process of the Mediterranean was born in 1995; in Barcelona, the first Euro-Mediterranean conference was held, promoted and supported by a government chaired by Felipe González.  It was also a government of Catalonia that co-proposed this conference, this process, this impulse as a reflection of the Mediterranean vocation of Barcelona and Catalonia. Catalonia has always had a triple vocation: Hispanic, Mediterranean and European, and continues to have it. It is true, and you know it, that we have had and still have political problems due to different opinions on the Hispanic vocation. But the political problems will pass and this vocation of Catalonia, Hispanic, Mediterranean and European will persist. All crises are always an opportunity and the one Catalonia is going through will not be different. Welcome, therefore, to the capital of the Mediterranean. A capital that hosts the headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean, with a great Secretary-General, who is also a member of the MedaWeek Advisory Council, which I have the honour to chair. But it will always be difficult to move forward if we are not able to internalise the difficulties that reality imposes. Difficulties in the European Union; we have not devoted sufficient energy from the European Union, the necessary attention, the resources that are also essential to the Mediterranean after the perspective and commitments that the above-mentioned Euro-Mediterranean conference of 95 of the Barcelona Process and its subsequent stages gave rise to.

The necessary and positive European unification needed, involved and driven by Chancellor H. Kohl distracted resources, priorities and political energies. The East became the focus of European attention. We must acknowledge this; we must be aware of it. But the Mediterranean’s protagonism demands once again that the political attention of the European Union should be prioritized. A European Union that, of course, has problems. You are aware of the Brexit problem, the desire therefore expressed in Britain’s referendum to leave the European Union. We are living a year that could be described dangerously with elections in Holland where there was a possibility of victory for an anti-European, xenophobic, racist political force; we are living elections in France with the possibility of a candidate, Mrs Le Pen, who is also very anti-European and racist, of reaching the French Presidency; Germany has had new elections, but as the results so far have not yet made it possible to have a stable government, that is what we need in order to promote and strengthen European unity and, through that momentum, to address the priority objectives, including the Mediterranean. The Italian, friend, Andrea Ricardi, founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio recently described Barcelona as a highway that connects different continents of the Mediterranean, three continents in this case. A highway that has unfortunately caused thousands of deaths, a drama exacerbated on the one hand by the war in Syria, which has left more than 400 000 dead and 5 million refugees, and on the other hand by an African continent with millions of young people ready to abandon their roots in the pursuit of European dream. The European Union has lacked the capacity to act in the face of the Syrian war, or the Libyan refugee camps, or famine in Africa as well.  Europe has a responsibility to ensure that the Mediterranean highway is, in turn, a bridge between continents through which economic and social progress, culture and peace circulate. Europe has to invest more in cooperation, and above all, it has to promote trade, the economy, the development of middle classes in the countries of the southern Mediterranean, a north-south integration that feels growth in the south and with it, progress and security. The best weapon against jihadism is mutual cooperation between one shore and the other of the Mediterranean in economic and cultural terms. As many of you are representatives of southern countries, and you know that beyond the different and various errors of the European Union in its attention to the Mediterranean and the cooperation between markets in the north and the south, the asymmetry that exists in the economic flows of this relationship, we have other problems. We also need south-south integration, which is still hampered today for political reasons. Maintaining tariff and non-tariff barriers, lack of cross-border infrastructure discourages trade and hampers the development of domestic and foreign investment, also due to the limited size of markets. The economies of the region are not always complimentary and sometimes lack diversification. They’ve got a lot of work to do. The European Union did not do everything, nor did everything that it has done well. But not all shortcomings in the south are attributable to our efficiencies or mistakes.

Collaboration through the Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce should create synergies that maintain our society and with it, our governments, an increasingly fluid relationship. The Mediterranean is our sea, our life, our history and our future. There is an Arab proverb that says “the past has fled, what you expect is absent, but the present is yours”. Let us, therefore, make our present the lever of support for reaching that future which, if it is absent today, we can and must ensure that tomorrow it is among us.

My best wishes therefore for Barcelona, capital of the Mediterranean, for the Mediterranean, for MedaWeek Barcelona and for all of you and for our common aspirations and objectives in favour of the Mediterranean.

12/15/2017