International seminar on "The EU and sub-regional multilateralism", organized by CIDOB Foundation, took place in Barcelona on January 28th and 29th. It was the kick off event of EU4seas project. Jordi Vaquer, Project Coordinator and Director of CIDOB Foundation, introduced the research programme and methodology for the three-year project. Angela Liberatore, European Commission DG Research, congratulated the panellists and the audience for fruitful discussions. Pleased to see the actual start of a project. Starting with teams with eight different countries in EU and larger Europe, and with interdisciplinary expertise and capacity. She added that it was a success to see how the project took the idea from the start that research should be a dialogue with policy making and practitioners.  

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”. She 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.

The open-up session was followed by a two-day intensive conference about the perspectives and future trends in multilateralism around Europe's four sea basins.

The seminar analyzed the role of multilateralism along the geographical axis of 4 seas: Baltic, Black, Caspian and Mediterranean sea basins.