On 9 June 2025, the Heads of State and Government and high representatives of Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and the EU on the invitation of the President of the French Republic, gathered at the summit “For a More Connected Mediterranean”, on the sidelines of the third United Nations Ocean Conference.

The meeting also brought together representatives of international organisations, development banks and large companies.

In view of common challenges in the Mediterranean, the Heads of State and Government decided to strengthen their cooperation and work towards shared and sustainable prosperity through a greater maritime, land and digital connectivity between Europe, the Mediterranean and the Gulf.

The Mediterranean Sea accounts for 25% of global maritime traffic and is at the heart of commercial, energy and digital exchanges. In this intense traffic area, States have raised the level of protection of the sea through regulation of transport in the Gulf of Lion a well as the creation of a low-sulphur emission zone, known as SECA zone, which encompasses the entire Mediterranean Sea. The latter was established on 1 May 2025 following the approval of the International Maritime Organisation.

The European Commission recalled that, as part of the Global Gateway strategy in the Middle East and North Africa, the European Union’s support reached €5.9 billion, which is expected to mobilise up to €27.2 billion in private and public investments. Commissioner Šuica also presented the objectives of the upcoming New Pact for the Mediterranean, which aims to strengthen partnerships between the European Union and the countries in the Mediterranean region, based on mutual interests.

Extensive bilateral and regional partnerships were announced for the development of new land and sea connections, the decarbonisation of ports and the deployment of new submarine cables. The participants discussed common objectives to ensure:

1) Decarbonisation of the maritime sector and major Mediterranean ports.

As part of a joint statement, the Mediterranean ports of Algesiras, Beirut and Marseille, announced the creation of a working group contributing to the reduction of shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions by providing ships with onshore power connections in ports while developing infrastructure for supply of alternative fuels and fostering rail or river onward transport towards the hinterland, as well as studying opportunities for new green corridors in the Mediterranean. All Mediterranean ports will be welcome to join the coalition before the COP24 of the Barcelona Convention (Cairo, December 2025). Croatia also announced the launch of its new Rijeka Gateway, green and fully automated, within the port of Rijeka, the most important Croatian port situated on three EU corridors.

2) Strengthening of maritime and land routes for transport of goods and green energy.

France and the European Commission, within the framework of the Global Gateway strategy and the New Pact for the Mediterranean, reiterated their support for the implementation of the India Middle East Europe Corridor (IMEC), including the mobilisation of Global Gateway funding to launch feasibilitystudies for this corridor. France reiterated its support for Egypt’s accession to IMEC, which aims to strengthen connectivity between East and West.

On 30 May 2025, France organised the first IMEC Sherpa meeting since the signature of the Memorandum of Understanding in September 2023. During this meeting, the participants reaffirmed their strong support for the project, as well as the need to consolidate IMEC’s governance while mobilising companies in the strategic sectors concerned. This same group has been invited by the European Commission to meet again, on the sidelines of the Global Gateway Forum to be held in Brussels on 9 and 10 October.

On energy connectivity between Europe and the Gulf, ACWA Power reaffirmed its commitment to convene a private-sector working group alongside leading European energy companies (including partners from France, Germany, Italy and Greece) to explore and develop joint projects in green hydrogen, renewable energy exports and related infrastructure, such as electrical interconnections. This collaborative framework will pave the way for clearer energy flows and the necessary investments under the IMEC corridor.

The Commission also stated the importance of advancing clean energy connectivity with North Africa, notably through the emerging T-MED Initiative, which supports renewable energy investment and infrastructure development across the Mediterranean.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Cyprus recalled the implementation of large renewable energy interconnection projects, such as the “GREGY” project, a 950-kilometre submarine cable with a capacity of 3 GW which aims to interconnect Egypt and Greece, or the “Great Sea Interconnector” (GSI), bridging Europe and Middle East with clean energy.

3) Increased digital connections between the Mediterranean and the Gulf.

The participants presented EU’s flagship “Medusa/GEANT” Submarine Cable System initiative, which will not only link the two shores of the Mediterranean, but also Southern Mediterranean countries among themselves, by manufacturing and deploying a submarine cable system based on the most recent technological advancements in fibre optics communications, fully based on European leading-edge technology. It will also contribute addressing the digital divide with partner countries. The network is led by the company AFR-IX telecom, with the support of the Orange Group and the European Union, while Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and Elettra Tlc are responsible for its deployment.

Other major initiatives are already currently contributing to the digital influence of the region, such as the Aqaba Digital Hub, which was inaugurated in 2023 and is one of the largest technological centres in the Near East.

Source: https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2025/06/09/joint-press-release-summit-for-a-more-connected-mediterranean

A sustainable Blue Economy requires support to promote and uptake innovation, knowledge, skills as well as access to finance, which is effective and locally-grounded. This is possible through joint actions promoted by socio-economic and institutional actors at local, national and subregional level.

In this respect, maritime clusters (a network of companies, organizations, and institutions involved in the maritime industry) play a crucial role to support local stakeholders active in the Blue Economy.

They do so by supporting innovative products and services, internationalisation of micro, small and medium enterprises, dissemination of new knowledge and skills and ultimately integration of sectoral policies at local and national levels. Maritime Clusters have therefore been growingly acknowledged as essential booster for innovation and diversification of the Blue Economy.

According to a study of the Union for the Mediterranean in 2019, the large majority of Maritime Clusters across the Mediterranean is based in EU countries: Italy, Spain, France. The western Mediterranean seems to be more prone to the promotion of innovation in the Blue Economy through the set-up of clusters: in the EU (mostly regional-level clusters) but also in African countries (mostly national-level clusters).

On a European level, the European Nework of Maritime Clusters (ENMC), has been established in 2023 as a platform for exchanging information and networking between the maritime Cluster organizations of European member states.

Source: UfM Secretariat – Maritime Clusters in the Mediterranean Region (pdf)

WestMED Maritime Cluster alliance
Since its inception in 2021, the WestMED Initiative, through the WestMED Maritime Cluster Alliance, supports strong alliances between the most active Maritime Clusters in the Western Mediterranean and beyond . This has included the launch of a new Maritime Cluster in Mauritania and the recently launched Libyan Maritime Cluster.

The key objectives of the Alliance are:

• Cluster dialogue: Support exchange of knowledge and practices across maritime and non-maritime clusters
• South-South cooperation: Boost the development of southern maritime clusters
• North-South capacity building: Upgrade cluster management skills
• Provide a platform for private investments in innovative SMEs

The Maritime Cluster Alliance has succesfully supported several project proposals that strengthen maritime clusters in order to secure funding. Next to MedBAN (COSME Euroclusters), these include for example:  MARMED and MAQUAM (funded through ERASMUS+), ELBE Alliance (funded through IKAT), and  Women in Blue Economy – WINBIG, Maritime Clusters CALLMEBLUE, Green Marine MED, and POWER4MED (funded through EMFAF).

MedBAN
The European MedBAN project, short for Mediterranean Blue Acceleration Network, is an initiative to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the blue economy.

It was co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement nº 101074763) through the Joint Cluster Initiatives (EUROCLUSTERS) for Europe’s recovery (SMP-COSME-2021-CLUSTER) under the Single Market Programme with a total budget of 1.4 Million euro.  The MedBAN project is therefore closely aligned with the Euroclusters’ specific objectives regarding networks, innovation, adoption of processes and technologies for the twin (digital & sustainable) transition, training for the up and re-skilling of the workforce and  internationalisation of European SMEs.

MedBAN was managed by a consortium of six maritime cluster organizations from five different Mediterranean countries: Portugal, Italy, France, Greece and Spain. Its common mission: to drive innovation, accelerate sustainability and internationalise blue SMEs, to support the transition towards a thriving, resilient and sustainable blue economy.

Stage 1: laying the foundation
The initiative consisted of two stages. First, the Mediterranean blue economy ecosystem was mapped to identify key players, challenges, and opportunities. This ensured that the actions by MedBAN would generate maximum impact on sustainable blue economy growth in the region. It resulted in identifying the five most critical sectors that MedBAN would focus on: aquaculture, fisheries, tourism, ports and renewable energies. SMEs in these sectors were specifically targeted in the 2^nd phase of the project.

Next to this,the coherence between the challenges found in each of the  the abovementioned sectors and the national and regional policies of each partner country of the consortium (national Resilience Plans) was analysed to ensure alignment from that perspective as well.

This first stage also consisted of 2 short online training sessions  for the cluster staff members of the participating cluster organisations, with an emphasis on challenges and needs for succesful projects and sharing best practices – which proved not only useful in the context of this project but also for dealing with members of each individual cluster organisation beyond the scope of this project.

Stage 2:  support SMEs with technical assistance/ services
The second stage consisted of offering selected SMEs and startups a large set of services to boost their business, ranging from market research to international matchmaking.  These services were offered by a pool of (mostly)pre-selected third parties that were funded by MedBAN in line with the awarded budget.

SMEs could apply for these services by submitting a specific project proposal via  ‘cascade funding’ calls in two categories: 1) Innovation, training and twin transformation to allow for modernisation of the business processes and 2) ‘internationalisation’ to allow for growing their business across borders. Both the call texts and the subsequent selection of proposals was based on the findings generated during the first phase.

Results
57 proposals from 49 SMEs were awarded support, with eight SMEs being awarded support for 2 proposals (one in each category). This support totalled  little over 1 Million Euro and consisted of organisations from 8 countries – mainly situated around the Mediterranean.

During MedBAN’s final conference in March 2025, some of these selected SMEs shared the impact of this project on their respective businesses:

Hydrotwin : a start-up specialised in underwater noise monitoring received MedBAN support regarding market and market penetration analysis to better explain its potential to investors and decision makers. It led a.o. to the identification of marine offshore renewables as a priority market.

Seaentia : a sustainable aquaculture startup. MedBAN allowed them to develop their export strategy to export their fish to other EU countries, keeping in mind that the long term strategy is to produce locally. One of the elements they focused on was EU regulatory compliance regarding hygiene and food safety in the transport of  fresh fish

Cyclefi : an SME that develops software and hardware solutions to tackle, waste, energy and water challenges. MedBAN allowed them to expand the market from focusing primarly on municipalities to ports .  This involved a.o. a comprehensive mapping of waste management within EU ports and Greece in specific, including the definition of an international matchmaking plan.  They have now been able to start with Piraeus port, to tackle waste generated by its millions of (tourist) visitors.

Maritime world : a startup specialised in short conferences, workshops, B2B meetings and technical tours across Europe, dedicated to the maritime industry. MedBAN support allowed for significant (international) growth, especially by getting better connected to high quality organisations across the Mediterranean, including the North African countries. One of the actions was a thorough Market Analysis that provided a database with contacts of more than 130 organisations. Maritime World is now on the way to create one of the biggest maritime conferences in Malta by the end of the year.

PesCo : a start-up with an online platform focused on sustainable fishing tourism, matching local fishermen with tourists. Through the MedBAN support they managed boost their network with hotels, tour- and travel agencies. They also received support to develop toolkits for two key target groups: guides (captains) to help improve the sustainability viewpoint and clients (exploreres) to help prepare for the fishing experience.

The common denominator was that MedBAN allowed them to take steps that would’ve otherwise taken much longer to develop.

Watch the full panel discussion

Moving forward
The consortium partners committed themselves to further build on MedBAN’s success. This was underlined  by signing the MedBAN Statutes (charter of principles); in which partners pledge to explore new opportunities of collaboration, foster stronger collaboration among clusters, commit to ongoing exploration of funding opportunities, and ensure long-term sustainability.

It was also underlined by signing a Memorandum Of Understanding for with CALLMEBLUE (Cluster Alliance Med Blue) to strengthen strategic collaboration.

WestMED connection
The initial idea for MedBAN was born in September 2021 at Seafuture in La Spezia and evolved through WestMED’s Maritime Clusters Alliance Technical Group into a successful submission for COSME funding. Next to this, Stephanie Vella (WestMED National Hub Malta) was an official ‘MedBAN ambassador’ and Lorella Ciutti (WestMED National Hub Portugal), MedBAN’s project coordinator. MedBAN has, in this respect, been supported  by the WestMED Assistance Mechanism from start to finish.

At the end of the MedBAN conference, project leader Ruben Eiras summed it all up: « Here we are, celebrating Europe. When we look at the numbers, of course, [the project] is just a drop in the ocean—but it is an important drop. Today, the Blue Economy represents innovation, defence, and sustainability—connecting, aggregating, and linking. What we aim for in a few year’s time, when we have MedBAN 2.0, is that we have investment funds and private actors with more capital to invest in these SMEs to make them grow. Let’s triple these numbers and make the Blue Economy happen! »