Habib Ben-Yahia: "Keep the door of  dreams open to overcome conflicts and political obstacles"

EU4SEAS will address the topic of “multilateralism, the new external relations of the EU” in the broad analysis of what is the role of “Europe in the world”. Angela Liberatore (European Commission) pointed out how important the Commission considers the open access of the results. The project will share its conclusions in a final Conference with the other two projects involved in multilateralism, EUGRASP and MERCURY. She stressed that the project may contribute to a better understanding the multilateralism as “one of options to have constructive relations with its partners” and find out the way to make it more effective.

Habib Ben-Yahia, general secretary of the Union of Arab Maghreb, a diplomatic with a vast experience in Foreign Affairs in Tunisia where he served as minister (1991-97, 1999-2004) stressed the importance of multilateralism to deal with world changes. He claimed for a more ambitious and in some way visionary thinking (“the Dreams Department”) in Diplomacy to overcome the conflicts and political obstacles for cooperation. He added that the normal way of relation, the bilateral dimension, cannot deal with crisis that should be dealt with collectivelly.