Barcelona will again be the epicentre of the meeting by Euro-Mediterranean cities, thirty years after the so-called Barcelona Process, the cooperation agreement by the region launched in 1995 to drive social, political and economic collaboration among the European Union and the countries bordering the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

The Conference of Mediterranean Cities Barcelona +30 brings together forty mayors and representatives from the region at the Palau de Pedralbes on 26 and 27 November. Under the slogan “Strengthening local action for regional transformation”, the aim is to foster dialogue to address the challenges of the future in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

The meeting will help gauge current relations between regions and cities, as well as assess the impact of three decades of the Barcelona Process. It will also explore future avenues for revitalising the role of local authorities in Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and dialogue.

The meeting will conclude with the publication of an institutional declaration on 28 November at the ministerial meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean, the document emphasises the role of cities and metropolitan areas as drivers of sustainable and inclusive urban growth, and of the mitigation of and adaptation to the climate emergency.

About the Barcelona Process

Launched by the state government in 1995, the Barcelona Process included all the member states of the European Union and twelve states of the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Cyprus and Malta.

At that moment, the city of Barcelona, under the Mayor Pasqual Maragall, saw the city as a key space for European and Mediterranean cooperation, linking this to the vision that the Barcelona projected at that post-Olympic point: a city with a vocation as an active role in the Mediterranean agenda from a perspective of dialogue, cooperation and development.