Forum Medays 2008
The 2008 MEDays edition, 'The Southern Forum for a New Mediterranean’ took place in Tangiers on the 26th, 27th and 28th November. This was marked by a regional context coinciding with the launching of the Union for the Mediterranean in Paris on the 13th July 2008.
This first edition had as its principal theme ‘The Union for the Mediterranean’ which aimed to firstly stimulate a better understanding of questions relevant to political, economic and social trials in regards to the region, in order to implement this new concept of the Mediterranean.
More than 500 participants took part in this first edition. A community of high level speakers coming from all around the Mediterranean and from Africa and North America animated panels with strong debates and innovative propositions. Among them, one could find government representatives, policymakers, public administrators, and CEOs, university graduates, researchers, civil servants and experts from intergovernmental organisations.
The first MEDays forum kept its promise. Discussions from panels and remarks made by high-level personalities resulted in a series of propositions addressed to southern Mediterranean countries.
Reflexions carried out by the 2008 MEDays led to a common engagement via the declaration of Tangiers, which was communicated to all the main political and economic decision makers from the region. The declaration insisted on the specific character of the Mediterranean identity as an important component of in shaping the citizen coming from the Mediterranean region.
Participants from the forum have also called on Algeria to go back to a return of reason and to spirit of responsibility with regards to the normalization of its relations with Morocco. As an pressing measure, they recommended the urgent reopening of the border frontiers between the two countries. The Amadeus Institute was equally engaged in encouraging actions intended to harmonize legislation between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
Some of the recommendations resulting from the debates bared fruit just a few months after the editions of 2008:
Governance : the need for a regional Maghreban brainstorming regarding good governance and human rights was stressed in the Tangier Declaration.
- 26-27th February 2009: The Amadeus Institute organized in Marrakech the first regional conference about governance in the region.
Energy : during the MEDays, 3 panels were devoted to energy.
- 9-15th January: Some of the recommendations resulting from these panels were discussed in the first Energy Forum organized by the Moroccan National Federation of energy.
