Portorož, Slovenia, 26 February. The Euro-Mediterranean University Foundation launched a new series of events -"EMUNI Talks: EMUNI Ambassadors' Series." The guest speaker at the first event H.E. Mrs Nicole Michelangeli, the Ambassador of the French Republic to the Republic of Slovenia delivered a lecture with a title "Union for the Mediterranean: State of Play and Expectations."

In the introductory part she introduced the motives and steps towards the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean, among which she stressed the Barcelona process from 1995 and the French initiative for the establishment of the Union. Among the reasons that brought closer towards the establishment, she listed that the border between the EU and the Mediterranean displays the largest gap in income in the world, the jobs creation rate is not sufficient to curb the unemployement growth and the Foreign Direct Investment of the EU into the Mediterranean stagnates.

In the following she introduced the 6 priority areas of the Union for the Mediterranean, among which are de-pollution of the Mediterranean, sea highways and ground highways, civil protection, Mediterranean solar plan, Mediterranean initiative for development of enterprises and higher education and science with the Euro-Mediterranean University.

She also introduced the role of the Union's Secretariat, which will identify, monitor and promote the projects, as well as seek for new partners, gather and monitor the initiatives meeting the goals of the UFM, and perform the funding, assessment of the projects, all of which under control of the political bodies (Senior Officials, Ministerial meetings, Summits) to which it proposes and reports.

She stressed that we're dealing with a long process, since e.g. 40 million jobs will have to be created in the next 15 Years to maintain the unemployment at its current level in the south of the Mediterranean, while Europe invests only 2 % of its total investments into the Mediterranean.

The opening event of the series was held in the time of the 7th session of the Management Board of EMUNI and the 4th Session of the EMUNI Senate. On this day also the Module of Euro-Mediterranean Studies, attended by students from 9 countries, ended at EMUNI. Prof. Dr. Joseph Mifsud, EMUNI president, distributed the certificates of attendance at the end of the lecture, together with the French, Polish, Egyptian and Cypriot ambassadors.

With these events the Foundation aims at spreading the awareness of Euro-Mediterranean issues among the general public and at involving members of the diplomatic corps in a greater extent into the activities of EMUNI and was attended by rectors, students and professors of EMUNI members, members of diplomatic corps, representatives of ministries, the local community and other invitees.

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