Societies in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean regions are facing many common challenges related to environment, migration and intercultural dialogue. Enhancing cooperation between civil societies and other actors from the two regions would therefore be important for developing common solutions, sharing best practices and making the voices of the civil society actors better heard. This is the main message of the report Baltic-Mediterranean Dialogue: Building civil society cooperation across the regions, which summarizes the results of a cooperation project funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation.

The project Facilitating Political Dialogue in the Baltico-Mediterranean Axis brought together NGOs from Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Israel and Morocco with the goal of creating a platform where civil society actors from the two regions could discuss topics of common interest related to environment, mobility and culture. Thus the project aimed for its part to fill the obvious gap between the many common challenges that the two regions are facing and on the other hand the lack of dialogue between civil societies in the Baltic-Mediterranean framework. Different forms and methods for the future dialogue were also tested in the course of the project.

The first step was to map the importance of the project themes for the people in the two regions and to examine their ideas and prejudices concerning the other region. This was achieved through a survey-based study on theAttitudes and prejudices between the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean regions, which was published in autumn 2010. The results of the study provided the basis for nine thematic round table discussions, which brought together representatives of civil society, researchers and other experts from the partner countries to discuss specific issues connected to mobility, culture and environment. The discussions took place as videoconferences, thus providing a testing ground for the use of this kind of technology for the purposes of civil society cooperation.

The project culminated in a seminar Baltic-Mediterranean Axis: A New Framework for Cooperation?, which took place in Espoo, Finland on April 2011. It brought together experts from both project regions to discuss the role of regional actors and civil society networks in promoting Baltic-Mediterranean cooperation and its future the perspectives in the light of the changes brought by the events of the Arab spring. The thematic working groups of the seminar discussed about cooperation also on a more practical level, drafting recommendations and producing concrete project ideas related to environmental cooperation, migration policies and the promotion of intercultural dialogue in the Baltic-Mediterranean framework.

Time is ripe forBaltic-Mediterranean cooperation

The results of the project show that even though the Baltic-Mediterranean framework doesn’t provide the same additional value for cooperation in all sectors, it is clear that it has still a lot of unused potential and that it has gained importance with the recent political and social changes in these regions.

The urgent, unsolved environmental challenges connected especially to marine pollution and climate change make the promotion of environmental cooperation an especially acute task, while the Arab spring offers a real possibility for change in cooperation related to intercultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab world. The xenophobic political tendencies gaining strength in many European countries also show that the voice of the civil society needs to make itself better heard in discussions and decision-making related to migration policies. In all these fields cooperation in the Baltic-Mediterranean framework could provide an important platform for voicing the common concerns of the civil societies in North and South, and for promoting cross-sectoral and cross-regional dialogue that is urgently needed. In many ways the window of opportunity for expanding and deepening this cooperation is now and it shouldn't be missed.

More information about the project and its results is available at the report Baltic-Mediterranean Dialogue: Building civil society cooperation across the regions (The report will be available also in French in July 2011)

Discussion on the project themes and the future of Baltic-Mediterranean cooperation continues on the blog page Baltic-Mediterranean Axis: A New Framework for Cooperation? at

https://balticmed.wordpress.com/

The project Facilitating Political Dialogue in the Baltico-Mediterranean Axis has been funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation and coordinated by the Finnish NGDO Platform to the EU, Kehys. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the Finnish NGDO Platform to the EU, Kehys, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation.