Brussels, 23/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - IEMED, the European Institute of the Mediterranean, is to hold a conference on 25 and 26 November in Barcelona on the media in the EuroMed zone, in conjunction with the Anna Lindh Foundation and supported and financed by the European Commission as part of the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Barcelona process. Among the participants will be Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations, Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister, Frederico Mayor Saragoza, the President of the high level group given responsibility for promoting the “alliance of civilisations” by the UN and various speakers representing the press and academia.
Its promoters hope that the conference should strengthen the emergence of monitored cooperation between the media in the “North” which are “well-established democracies” and the “South”, where reforms have been slow to be applied, and whereas the “south is Muslim and often practicing, the north is catholic, or orthodox and, in certain countries, predominantly agnostic”. To deal with this, the conference will be organised in several workshops, of which one of the most important will deal with the issue of the “visibility” of the Barcelona partnership, which has been deemed insufficient with regard to the political ambitions of the process, hindering the involvement of civil society. The celebration of the 10th anniversary should therefore be an opportunity to examine the issue and the means of remedying the deficiencies. Another topic to be discussed is whether television and the media in general really contribute to promoting understanding between Mediterranean peoples. This will deal with the region's media in general and in particular the Arab satellite television stations.