The EuroMeSCo Secretariat – in close collaboration with the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), and with the support of the European Commission – organised the 3rd Preparatory Meeting for the 2008 EuroMeSCo Annual Conference.

The meeting aimed at initiating a debate on relations between the EU and the countries of the Mashreq. Almost thirteen years after ‘Barcelona’, three years since the 2005 Summit, and three months past the Paris summit that gathered Euro-Mediterranean heads of state and governments, what balance can be made of relations between the two shores of the Mediterranean and the institutional framework that emerged from there? What does the future hold, particularly in view of the newly-created Union for the Mediterranean? How may we stimulate the emergence of a new momentum within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, in the face of its complex evolutions, while also expressing this dynamic through the various initiatives that currently exist on a regional, sub-regional and national level? These were but some of the questions addressed at the workshop, which followed up on the debates and resulting conclusions of the two previous Preparatory Meetings, held in Tunis and Rome earlier in 2008.