• Seminar by the transform! Working Group Brussels

  • What Mediterranean Policy for the EU?

  • The Brussels Working Group of transform! europe starts its 2013 program of seminars dealing with the central question of the role of the EU in the world.

    By the end of March, Tunis will host the World Social Forum, putting the EU policy towards Mediterranean countries at the centre of the political agenda of social movements.

    As it is well-known the civic revolutions of the Arab Spring surprised the European Union which had developed a neighborhood policy based on market access to EU markets and development aid in exchange of liberalisation to European investors and containment of African migration. The new European External Action Service (EEAS) does not seem to have served either to forecast the Arab Spring, to coordinate the foreign and security policy of EU members States in this area, or to develop a coherent democratization strategy based on the political principles set up by the Lisbon Treaty for external relations.

    To discuss the EU policy to the South Mediterranean we will have the privilege to count with three contributions dealing respectively with the Free Trade Agreements of the EU towards the Mediterranean, the question of migration in these relationships and which possible alternative perspectives could be generated from European social and political movements to change this state of affairs.

Programme

Wednesday, 20 March 2013, 19.00-21.00

Presentations:

  • Michel Cermak (Chargé de Recherche et de plaidoyer ‘Travail décent’ at CNCD)
  • Marie-Christine Vergiat (MEP GUE/NGL – Front de Gauche, member of LIBE committee and Delegation for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union)
  • Claire Mandouze (Leopold Mayer Foundation, Member of its board)

Moderator: Thierry Leguay (transform! Working Group Brussels)

 

The seminar will be followed by a buffet dinner with drink