Issue No 6
April-July 2023
www.eesc.europa.eu/rex
Dear reader,
In recent months, and even more so with the beginning of the new mandate, the REX section has opened up new strands of activity. The recent Euromed Summit was dedicated, alongside the digital and energy transition, to water, a topic the whole EESC is working on in 2023 and which is expected to become more and more important in the future.
Water is becoming a scarce resource: demand for it is growing, and the problem is getting worse because of climate change. This is now felt even in the EU; however, the effects are felt much more acutely in places such as the Mediterranean, where temperatures are rising 20% faster than the global average. Less water means more displacements of people and more international tensions: since 2010, there have been more than 466 conflicts worldwide over water control, most of them in Africa and the Middle East. It is clear that we need blue diplomacy to prevent conflicts and make international cooperation on water a reality.
Wise policies under the banner of multilateralism can make an enormous contribution to multifaceted problem-solving: ensuring better cooperation on the energy transition with the countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, for example, can reduce these countries' carbon footprint and fight climate change, empower their economies, and help the EU to reach the goals set under the Green Deal.
Indeed, the Mediterranean countries have one of the highest potentials for clean-energy production in the world: thanks to new technologies that have made solar and wind power more profitable than fossil fuels, they could help Europe phase out oil and gas imports. This new form of cooperation between the two shores of the Mediterranean could also avoid creating economic problems for the southern shore once the EU has stopped importing fossil fuels.
The same mutual need for significant cooperation applies to our relationships with Central Asia: the five post-Soviet era countries want to diversify their international relations and stop depending too much on Russia and China. They need our help to build infrastructure, avoid water crises, and ensure their democratic, social and economic development more generally. The EU is very keen on working with Central Asia, and the Global Gateway is a perfect tool in this respect. While the Commission has been signing partnership and cooperation agreements with the five countries (only Turkmenistan is missing to date), the EESC has also started work: we have already initiated contact with Kazakh civil society.
The implementation of the Global Gateway is also a key topic in our contact with our African partners, whom we met at the EU-Africa Meeting of Economic and Social Stakeholders, as well as in our contact with our Latin American partners participating in the summit between the EU and the Community of the Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). It is crucial to show our partners that, in the current global battle of offers, a model based on democratic values and respect for the environment has a better chance of boosting their sustainable development!
Another hot topic is the fight against disinformation. Convinced of the importance of mobilising civil society to counter this phenomenon, the REX section held a dedicated conference in Sofia. The event, organised in conjunction with the Bulgarian Economic and Social Council and supported by an awareness-raising campaign on social media, is the first in a series that we want to launch in order to engage everyone in the struggle for an objective information system that contributes to an open democratic debate.
We will keep you informed of further developments.