On 3 April, Barcelona City Council presented its first Euro-Mediterranean Strategy, a strategic document resulting from the joint work carried out by the City Council and the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), in collaboration with the MedCities network. It is a roadmap that seeks to give new impetus to Euro-Mediterranean policies and to position Barcelona as the capital of this region, not only in the political sphere but also in the economic, social and cultural spheres.

At an event attended by the Barcelona City Council’s Commissioner for City Promotion, Pau Solanilla, the Executive President of IEMed, Senén Florensa, and the Director of MedCities, Oriol Barba, it was stressed that the aim of this work is to strengthen Barcelona’s role as a central player in Euro-Mediterranean relations and, at the same time, to position the city as one of the main nodes of development in the region.

It is worth noting that this Euro-Mediterranean Strategy comes shortly before the Spanish Presidency of the EU and the European elections, with the aim of bringing the Euro-Mediterranean dimension back into the European debate, from a local perspective and grounded in urban realities.

A strategy to maximise Barcelona’s positioning in the region

Barcelona has generated an ecosystem of key institutions and actors in the field of Euro-Mediterranean relations that are based in the city. Now, with this document, the aim is to help ‘Mediterraneanise’ the main existing strategies and respond not only to the challenges that already appeared at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference in Barcelona in 1995, but also to the phenomena that have emerged with force, such as the fight against climate change, gender equality and digitalisation.

A total of 19 worksheets have been drawn up in response to three strategic objectives, such as exercising the Mediterranean capital status, building the region and values, and generating policies and good practices. These are 19 specific and tangible actions to maximise Barcelona’s positioning in the Euro-Mediterranean region and how cities can influence the EU’s Euro-Mediterranean agenda.

Barcelona’s immediate objective is to start preparing the 30th anniversary of the Barcelona Process, one of the most important milestones in the field of cooperation between the countries on both shores of the Mediterranean.

This is the second regional strategy promoted by Barcelona City Council, after the Asian one, presented on last November 22.

With images from IEMed.