WestMED at GREEN MARINE MED Stakeholder event in Morocco
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:
- The Future of Green Shipping in the Mediterranean
- Innovations in Sustainable Maritime Technologies
- 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)
