On 23 May 2025, WestMED’s National Hub France, together with Pole Mer Mediterranée, organised a national stakeholder event in Mottpellier, to inform and discuss EC funding opportunities. Thirtyfive people joined in-person and online for this event that mirrored a previously organised similar national event for the Atlantic Strategy on May 13 in Brest.

This event in Montpellier was primarily dedicated to the funding call related to Horizon Europe cluster 6 on Fisheries, Aquaculture and Blue Biotechnologies. However, cluster 1: Health, was also briefly discussed.

On behalf of the the French ministry in charge of research with its national Horizon Europe focus (Ministere de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche), Fatiha Fort presented the open, ongoing Horizon Europe calls. She also pointed to the existence of specific hubs, serving as as accelerators, such as the EIC that supports start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale-up innovations. This was followed by a presentation by Salomé La Ragione, from Pôle Mer Méditerranée, who provided an overview of the countries eligible for the Horizon Europe calls.

Frédérick Herpers and Colin Ruel from WestMED’s French National Hub showcased the added value of the WestMED initiative with its Assistance Mechanism, offering different forms of support to national stakeholders; not only through WestMED’s French national hub but also through the Atlantic Strategy’s French National Hub, as France borders both sea basins.

The support offered by these hubs is twofold. On the one hand, it allows helping organisations with projects or project-ideas that strengthen the sustainable blue economy, find relevant project funding and/or suitable project-partners to form (often required) international consortia while also helping in the funding application process. On the other hand, the national hubs support the alignment of sustainable blue economy policy frameworks at local, national and regional (Western Mediterranean) level. This also includes exploring synergies with the other sea basins strategies such as the Atlantic, the Black Sea and the emerging North Sea (the Greater North Sea Basin Initiative) – thus allowing for an extensive network that can be tapped.

Clémence Le Corff, from Pôle Mer Méditerranée highlighted the strong link between the WestMED National Hub France and Pole Mer Mediterranée, showcasing the robustness and wide range of support available for project development, capitalizing on its strong experience in supporting organisations with EU funded projects.

Frédérick Herpers, French National Hub for the WestMED and the Atlantic and Philippe Dubois from Innofluence gave an example of how Expertise France also supports projects with capacity building on the Southern shore of the Western Mediterranean. The (EU supported) Blue Economy Program for Algeria allowed for the specific training of Algerian researchers related to EU project submission (for funding) and using the National Hub’s networks for helping to find project partners. It underscored the point that challenges are common for all countries bordering the Mediterranean sea basin and that cooperation and sharing practices across both shores are pivotal.

In this respect the event was also an opportunity to present the different WestMED National Hubs with networks that directly cover 10 countries in total. Some Tunisian, Morrocan and Algerian stakeholders attended online, underlining the importance and involvement of southern shore countries.

This event’s objectives to inform and discuss funding opportunities under Horizon 2025 were met thanks to the presentations and exchanges with the audience while demonstrating the existence and the readiness of the Assistance Mechanism (National Hub) to support.

Views and experiences were shared related to project submission, and participants were invited to consider project leadership and/ or partnership to apply for the new batch of funding opportunities under Horizon Europe.

The location of the event in Montpellier (Cité des métiers de demain) was strategic in order to engage stakeholder from Occitanie and regional authorities.

 

Visit the event announcement page (incl. agenda)

Join us on 23 May in Cork at the European Maritime Day (EMD) 2025, for the workshop ‘Maximising support for blue skills and ocean literacy.’

This event will explore how the EU Sea Basins Assistance Mechanism can play a stronger role in supporting blue skills development and ocean literacy across all three Sea Basins that have a Sea Basin Strategy in place: Western Mediterranean, Black Sea and Atlantic.

The workshop highlights the growing interest from various Sea Basin Strategy Presidencies and Coordinators to foster more cooperation on this topic; not only at the policy level but also through concrete, technical actions on the ground with support to projects.

The workshop will briefly presents the state of play in this area with practical examples and the ongoing study on blue skills by DG Mare and CINEA, while further exploring opportunities and untapped potentials.

The experts
This  workshop will feature several distinguished experts:

Matteo Bocci: Central team Member of the EU Sea Basins Assistance Mechanism, who will moderate the workshop, contribute to discussions on enhancing cooperation and explore synergies between the strategic blue economy initiatives.

 

Olga Mashkina: (ACTeon) coordinator of the EU4Ocean Coalition who will emphasise the role of ocean literacy by involving younger generations and training educators.

 

Alessandro Pititto: (Cogea) will present the recent study for a Framework on Blue Skills and Competencies across the EU | Preliminary results

 

Paul Hegarthy: Head of the National Maritime College of Ireland who will focus on the importance of providing  agile education and training for skills development by collaborating through partnerships

 

 

An  interactive Q&A session will allow the audience to finetune the work of the EU Sea Basins Assitance Mechanism for the years to come, including shaping the agenda for the upcoming EU Macro-regions and Sea Basins Day which will take place in September 2025 in Brussels.

When: 23 May 2025 | 13:30-14:45
Where: European Maritime Day 2025 | Cork-Irelend | Cork City Council – Millenium Hal

More information: visit the EMD website

The EMFAF project ‘Green Marine Med‘ (one of the 4 successfully supported projects by the WestMED Technical Group on Green Shipping), is implementing an series of events across the Mediterranean, to engage stakeholders and further exploit the planned activities of the newly established Center of Excellence in Barcelona. 

Within this context, on 23 April 2025, an interesting workshop in Tanger, Morocco was organised, titled: South Mediterranean Sustainable Shipping – Innovation, collaboration and excellence.

Its main objective was to showcase the readiness of operators, both on behalf of infrastructures, shipowners and shipbuilders, as well as multilateral financial institutions to support capacity building, innovation efforts and investments towards decarbonising the maritime transport value chain, also in favour of southern shore countries.

Both the WestMED National Hubs of Morocco (Hassan Agouzoul) and of Italy (Leonardo Manzari) participated in this event.

Highlights included three dynamic panels:

1. The Future of Green Shipping in the Mediterranean
2. Innovations in Sustainable Maritime Technologies
3. Financing Green Shipping: Unlocking Investment Opportunities

During the first session, moderated by Leonardo Manzari (as coordinator of WestMED’s Green Shipping Technical Group), the urgent expectation for a clear harmonization of the international regulatory framework and an integrated government approach, clearly emerged as main missing factors to boost investments.

Morocco, in this respect, presented itself as a leading country for investments, in implementing the national long-term low-carbon strategy, combining energy projects with maritime transport infrastructures, as well as working on its Sustainable Blue Economy strategy that WestMED directly supports and assists.

Next to the interesting contributions coming from the GREEN MARINE MED partners (WOC, CTN and Indegate) and stakeholders, the participation of EBRD and ADB was extremely useful, to unlock the potential of the blue economy for all sectors, and explain the financial facilities available for the Sustainable Blue Economy stakeholders, mostly addressing SMEs and port communities/clusters.

At the end of the event,  the organisers gave participants the opportunity to visit the TangerMED Port, a major infrastucture in northern Morocco, as a concrete example of innovation in terms of decarbonization, inclusive governance, synergies between operators on both sides of the Mediterranean and sustainable competitiveness.

Agenda: click here

For more information, contact Hassan Agouzoul (WestMED National Hub Morocco) or Leonardo Manzari (WestMED National Hub Italy)