Brussels, 17/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - The Marseilles Centre for Integration in the Mediterranean (CMI), set up in October 2009, will be organising its second general assembly on 18 November in Marseilles. This will provide an opportunity to evaluate sustainable development policies carried out in the region. Fourteen programmes are now in their implementation phase, indicated the CMI, which also pointed out that it sought to promote sustainable development policies by way of a “knowledge and collective learning exchange platform in a region that is becoming increasingly inter-dependent on social and economic levels”.
Its programmes are divided into five thematic clusters - urban and spatial developments; environment and water; skills, employment and workers' mobility, including problems affecting young people; transport and logistics; and the knowledge economy, innovation and technology. Over the course of a year, the CMI has organised a series of events and has already carried out its first studies, which will enable decision-makers in the MENA region to share and implement the knowledge and analysis of the most relevant data in the formulation of public policies. These exchanges took place in the framework of a number of seminars. Twenty-two of them, headed or sponsored by the CMI alone or in cooperation, took place in almost all the programmes, including the dialogues with ministers from the southern Mediterranean. Ten of these events took place in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. (F.B./transl.fl)