Since its conception the making of the Anna Lindh Report can be defined a product of intercultural participation and exchange among experts from various countries of the Mediterranean region.

Thus expert meetings have been organised to define the Report scientific coherence and components while institutional meetings have taken place to orientate and validate the steps taken at each stage of the Report development.

First meeting of the Report Scientific Committee

On 1 April 2009 the first meeting of the Report Scientific Committee was organised in Cairo and lasted one full day.

The meeting had the objective of operationally and conceptually define the main research components of the Report benefiting from the experience and opinion of the experts involved.

Four experts, three of them also members of the Foundation’s Advisory Council, participated to it, namely: Dr. Sara Silvestri, Professor and researcher at City University London, Department of International Politics; Dr. Antoine Messarra, Professor of journalism and sociology in the Lebanese University and Director of the Foundation of Permanent Civil Peace; Dr. Heidi Dumreicher, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Oikodrom - Institute for Urban Sustainability in Austria; Dr. Said El Dakkak, Professor of International Law at Alexandria University.

The meeting was fruitful and led to the identification of the main intercultural indicators to be measured with the opinion poll, the establishement of some basic principles for the Report development such as the need to overcome the dychotomy Islam/Europe-the West caracterising several exisiting studies and to explore the potential of the rich cultural diversity of the Mediterranean region.

Besides, the Committee stressed the importance of developing a study to be used by actors engaged in the promotion of dialogue and not only a scientific piece of work for academics. For this reason the need to identify exisiting trends intercultural behaviours and values in the populations of the region and to derive, as much as possible, orientations for the future.

A final point that emerged from the discussion was the need to combine in the Report quantitative and qualitative analysis that could provide an interpretation of the collected empirical data and take into account the existing studies led in the field of intercultural relations in the region.

Meeting with selected opinion poll company

On 1 July, after selection through an international tender procedure of the polling company, a restricted meeting was organized in Cairo with representatives of Gallup, namely Mr. Robert Manchin, Managing Director of Gallup Europe Organisation, Mr. Jihad Fakhreddine, Regional Research Director for Middle East and North Africa, and Dr. Mohamed Tozy, Professor of Political Science at the University Hassan II of Casablanca in Morocco and the University of Aix en Province.

The meeting was held to provide an in-depth brief to the polling company about the main objectives of the Anna Lindh Report and expectations concerning the regional survey. Methodological as well as questions of terminology arose during the discussion in light of the unique and innovative scope of the poll commissioned by the Anna Lindh Foundation covering the whole Euro-Mediterranean region and investigating people’s perceptions related to intercultural relations.

Second meeting of the Report Scientific Committee

On 6 and 7 July, the members of the Report Scientific Committee gathered in Brussels to discuss and finalise the draft opinion poll questionnaire proposed by Gallup as well as to exchange views on some aspects of the qualitative analysis in the Report.

The reunion took place at the premises of Gallup Europe organization and involved Dr. Mohamed Tozy; Dr. Sara Silvestri; Dr. Antoine Messarra; Dr. Naomi Sakr; Dr. Heidi Dumreicher; Dr. Said El Dakkak in addition to representatives from Gallup and Mr. André Azoulay, President of the Anna Lindh Foundation.

The reflection and the work was very intense in consideration also of the need of finalising the opinion poll questionnaire and allow Gallup to administer it in the thirteen selected countries during the summer months.

At the end the result was very positive and a questionnaire was developed with the objective of assessing the propensity of the people from the region towards a common Mediterranean project. On this basis the questionnaire evolved around the five following components:

• The interest that people have in the economic, cultural and religious life of other countries in the region
• The level of interaction with people from different countries, the context in which these exchanges take place and the impact they have on mutual perceptions
• The values trends in the societies of the region and the level of mutual knowledge of each other’s set of values
• The ideas that people have about the Mediterranean region in terms of representation and vision for the future
• The impact of media on people’s mutual perception, in line with the annual Report focus on media for 2010

The finalised questionnaire was then circulated to the ALF Board of Governors, Advisory Council and Heads of National Networks.

Dr. Naomi Sakr, Director of the Arab Media Center at the University of Westmister, also shared with the other Committee members the work done until then on the media component of the Report and main objectives of the analytical media articles that would investigate values conveyed by the media in terms of intercultural dialogue in the countries surveyed by the opinion poll.

Third meeting of the Report Scientific Committee

On 20 November, hosted by the René Seydoux Foundation in Paris, the Report Scientific Committee gathered to exchange views on the opinion poll results and reflect on the reccomendations for action.

The discussion on the results occupied most of the time because it was fascinating to explore what the people of the Euromed region expressed about the future of the Union for the Mediterranean, the level of mutual interest and perceptions while trying to identify initial explainations to those answers.

The Committee was almost unanimous in the appreciation of the results that would not show a clear distinction among the people of European and Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries and rather a spectrum of preferences around the Mediterranean.

The exchange on the reccomendations was therefore not finalised and further meetings and/or consultations with the experts will be necessary in order to complete work on this.