NEWS Four international organizations launch a new Euro-Med agenda

Mediterranean_Sea_location_mapBy Enrico Molinaro

In view of the 25th anniversary of the Barcelona Declaration, the leaders of four international organizations, Amb. Miguel Angel Moratinos (High Representative, United Nations Alliance of Civilizations-UNAoC), Amb. Nasser Kamel (Secretary General, Union for the Mediterranean-UfM), Dr. Nabil Al-Sharif (Executive Director, Anna Lindh Foundation-ALF), and Prof. Angelo Riccaboni (President, PRIMA Foundation), for the first time together, launched a new joint positive agenda, vision and action plan, giving a fresh momentum to the multilateral cooperation within the common Euro-Med ecosystem.
The inter-institutional Seminar on the Revitalization of the Euro-Med Cooperation, a side-event of the fifth edition of the Rome Med-Dialogues, held in Rome on December 6, 2019 was a follow-up to the successful bilateral meeting between Amb. Kamel and Dr. Al-Sharif organized by RIDE-APS in Palermo on May 15, 2019, in close cooperation with the Italian MoFA’s Euro-Med coordinator.

The undersigned, Secretary General of RIDE-APS, and Chairman of Mediterranean Perspectives, organizer of the event on behalf of the Italian Network for the Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue RIDE-APS), chaired the discussion with foreign diplomats, academics, experts from the Italian civil society, including Muslim, Jewish, and Christian representatives.

In front of a qualified audience, Marco Lorentini (By Words International, RIDE-APS member) explained how the Talmud Project, which received positive national and international feedback, developed an innovative software with a potential applicability to the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, including the Scaena Mediterranea project, networking ancient Greek and Roman theaters in the Mediterranean.

Abdellah Redouane (Cultural Islamic Center of Italy) has launched a heartfelt appeal to the religious communities against the phenomena of disintegration in the region, recalling the words of Pope Francis to recover the spirit of the Barcelona Declaration of 1995.

Paola Sarcina (MThI, RIDE-APS member, and Italy’s representative at the ALF Advisory Council) anticipated the program of the tenth edition of the Cerealia 2020 Festival, dedicated next year to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the 25th anniversary of the Barcelona Declaration, announcing the dates of the inauguration in Rome, 6 June 2020, and of the Ponza Prima-Med event scheduled for the 3rd September 2020 in the island.

Angelo Santi Spina (proserpina Impresa, RIDE-APS’ opinion leader) highlighted the concrete possibilities to implement a concerted inter-institutional strategy on environment, sustainable development and circular economy, involving civil society and the main stakeholders to finally move from theory to practice.

Piero Bassetti (Globus et Locus) has revived Glocal identities (global and local) through the idea of Italic civilization. In this respect, the undersigned mentioned also the opposite model of Statist identity, developed in Europe especially after the Westphalia Peace in 1648. From the anthropological point of view, both of these orthodox models are gradually replacing orthopractic models of collective identity, based on the concrete daily rituals typical of the ancient Mediterranean communities, rather than on abstract principles of faith or ideology, as the example of the Armenian quarter, beside the three Jewish, Islamic and Christian quarters in the Old City of Jerusalem, still shows us nowadays.