During their meeting on 13 January at the Headquarters of the European Union Presidency in Brussels, the Anna Lindh Foundation’s Board of Governors finalized the shaping of the priorities of the Foundation for the year 2010, while highlighting more specifically “the necessity to reinforce the role of civil societies in deepening and extending the Euro-Mediterranean partnership”.

Speaking in their capacities of co-presidents of the Union for the Mediterranean, the representatives of France and Egypt underline in this regard the uniqueness of the Anna Lindh Foundation, an institution that currently gathers close to 3000 NGOs present in the 43 founding countries of the Union for the Mediterranean.

The French representative, Ambassador Serge Telle, in charge of the Union for the Mediterranean at the French presidency level, declared that “the Anna Lindh Foundation can now be considered as one the most innovative instrument of the Process the Union re-launched in July 2008 in Paris”.

In this perspective, the President of the Anna Lindh Foundation, M. André Azoulay, shed the light on the importance and the exceptional format of the great forum the Foundation is organizing from 4 to 7 March in Barcelona, one that will witness contributions from hundreds of representatives of the Euro-Mediterranean civil society coming to debate and exchange on the human and socio-cultural bases of the Union for the Mediterranean.

In addition, M. André Azoulay expressed his satisfaction concerning the forthcoming setting of the Headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona, with the newly nominated Jordanian Ambassador, Ahmed Massadeh, at the position of its Secretary General.

« The Union for the Mediterranean now has a face and soon will have an address and a phone number, and all this will allow the Anna Lindh Foundation to expand and optimize its action” added M. André Azoulay while “emphasizing how symbolic and promising it had been to empower through this Secretary General a Southern Mediterranean country, Jordan, in the mission to lead proudly and efficiently the building process of a Euro-Mediterranean partnership that has been refined, enlarged and reinforced by the ambitious objectives set out by the Union for the Mediterranean”.