As part of the Sustainable Tourism Mission breakout room, governance and policy transfer between Northern and Southern Mediterranean countries were at the core of the discussions.
The Sustainable Tourism Mission of the Interreg Euro-MED Programme actively participated yesterday in MED Talks 2025, contributing to high-level discussions enriched by testimonials from partners across the Southern Mediterranean. The exchanges highlighted shared challenges, governance gaps and emerging opportunities for strengthening sustainable tourism cooperation across the Euro-Mediterranean region.
MED Talks is a key annual online event jointly organised by the Interreg Euro-MED Programme and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). Since December 2023, the event has served as a strategic platform to strengthen dialogue between the two shores of the Mediterranean, bringing together successful, labelled Interreg Euro-MED projects to showcase results, best practices and transferable solutions, while fostering collaboration with stakeholders from the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean.
The agenda included presentations of key achievements and future opportunities linked to the four Interreg Euro-MED Missions, as well as synergies with Interreg NEXT MED. Designed to encourage active participation, sessions combined short formats, interactive chats and focused discussions to support meaningful exchange and long-term cooperation.
Focus on governance and policy transfer
As part of the Sustainable Tourism Mission breakout room, governance and policy transfer between Northern and Southern Mediterranean countries were at the core of the discussions. The session gathered experts and practitioners to reflect on how Euro-MED projects can better engage local authorities, SMEs, academia and tourism stakeholders from the Southern Mediterranean.
The participants answered to several questions in a slido pool in which the highlighted Participants highlighted the importance of capacity-building programmes to strengthen skills in sustainable tourism governance and identified key governance challenges as limited coordination between institutions and insufficient resources and monitoring systems to support sustainability actions.
The session featured three expert testimonials that provided concrete experiences. Latifa Bousselmi (Water Research and Technologies Center – CERTE, Nabeul, Tunisia) presented the work of CERTE and shared insights from the NAWAMED Project, particularly its Mediterranean policy document on non-conventional water resources. She underlined common governance challenges across programmes and offered recommendations for stronger Mediterranean policy alignment and cooperation. Hend Abdelrazek (Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, Alexandria, Egypt) highlighted the Arab Academy’s experience in projects linking heritage and tourism, including the Touritage Project (Erasmus+ Program). The discussion explored potential synergies with the Sustainable Tourism Mission and invited the Arab Academy to engage as an associated partner.
Chaima Bennasr (International Center of Technologies of the Environment, CITET Tunisia) presented the Centre’s background and its involvement in projects such as AQUACYCLE and CLIMA, identifying strong complementarities with the Sustainable Tourism Mission and opportunities for future collaboration.
MED Talks 2025 once again confirmed its role as a key platform for dialogue, knowledge sharing and joint actions in sustainable tourism.
