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Thank, thank you very much. Good morning everybody.

Dear President of the Balearic Islands, dear Margalida dear ladies and gentlemen, I'm more than happy to see many familiar faces here.

I'm in the capacity of the commissioner for the Mediterranean, but you know, once a mayor, always a mayor,

so I somehow understand what you represent and what is, what are you advocating for.

So it's a pleasure to speak about the implementation of the pact for the Mediterranean in within the European Eco cities,

regions and cities.

I want to thank, of course, government of the Balearic Islands, but also government of Catalonia,

the Med Cooperation Alliance, and the Committee of the Regions for the invitation.

And allow me also to thank the Euro-Mediterranean region, and local, assembly, so-called AREM.

For your tireless engagement keeping the regional and local dimension of the pact of the Mediterranean on the agenda.

So as I said, I know the importance of local and regional level, and I think it's very important to link local, regional, national,

and of course European because, but as all of us know,

you are closest to the citizens and this is very important.

Last year when I spoke to you, I laid, I at that time I laid my vision of the pact.

At that time we were on the eve of launching it. It was, November 26th or 27th.

1 year later, I have to say that I'm proud that we progressed from presentation to implementation.

We have launched 21 concrete and tangible actions co-designed with our Southern Mediterranean partners.

I would like to talk about 3 ways in which the pact for the Mediterranean can support regions. First, the pact empowers people.

This is the first pillar of the pact. The pact strengthens the local economy.

This is the 2nd pillar which is economy, energy, and investments.

And the 3rd, the pact protects local communities from the impacts of climate change like drought and wildfires and migration, not to protect, but you mentioned migration,

so I have to say a few words about this because the 3rd pillar is about preparedness,

resilience, and security, and it is always about the local communities and people.

So let me start with empowering people, especially young people.

We know, we all of us know how important universities are,

how important education is, how important research is for your regions and cities.

Last year I told you about one of our flagship project which is called Mediterranean University.

At that time I explained that it's not the building of new premises, but it is about.

Aligning or alliance of Mediterranean universities or network of uni universities across Mediterranean and I say say across is not only Balearic Spain,

France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Malta, Cyprus it's also about our southern.

Neighborhood and our southern partners, so,

putting forward the joint degrees and mobility for students and staff from all shores of the Mediterranean. I have to be open to you.

There was some, you know, some of the countries, approaching elections, as you know, and there was, some criticism about.

Extending the ideas of Erasmus to the countries of the southern neighborhood, but how to connect if you don't connect people so there was a criticism we are wasting our taxpayers' money and so on and so on and so on,

but of course we think that youngsters connect, they,

they have the best, precondition to connect.

They are not, they don't have any prejudice, and I think, we have to continue working on this.

So, mm, we already, we already have core partners for this,

and, we started this initiative.

We earmarked 1 €11 million for this, so we started already working on this.

Next step will be to open the initiative to universities across our region,

setting up university consortia, and, eventually setting up MD campus or MED campuses.

At the same time, we continue our work on Euro-Mediterranean research and innovation cooperation.

All of you know how important it is for your businesses to get skilled people.

The problem of today of Europe, and of course same for goes from, from your for your regions is that we, lack skilled people,

new jobs of today, you know, the technology, is, is developing so fast,

so we need New skills for digital jobs, for green jobs, for artificial intelligence. So it's mainly about vocational training.

When I say universities, universities, of course we need basic knowledge of history, history of art,

religion, whatever, but this is not what the Mediterranean university is about.

It is mainly about vocational training and to reply to the needs of today and tomorrow, of course.

So this is what we have been doing.

This is why the math skills tracker is a key action under the pact,

and it allows people to easier access jobs because their diplomas and work experience are recognized,

and this is very important.

You must have noticed that President von der Leyen in her State of the Union speech mentioned the Mediterranean, Youth and Skill Initiative. Skills initiative.

This is also something where we will, we are working very hard on it, and this will become part of our, of our Med university.

This connects me to my second point, which is Rosa, good morning. Good morning.

This connects, this connects my second point on the economy.

So as I said, economy is also important and small businesses, SMEs, everything is important for your regions, for your cities.

So we want the pact under the pact to create the conditions for people to thrive in the local communities.

This is why we created Start Up for Med to support small and medium enterprises and startups in our regions.

This initiative focuses especially on young people and women entrepreneurs, which is very important.

Of course it provides training, monitoring, networking,

and access to finance because for women access to finance is sometimes very very difficult so we are trying to support this through our social entrepreneurship fund.

The fund mobilizes €80 million to support social enterprises across the Mediterranean.

And it is also backed by €7 million in technical assistance that will help us reach more than 136,000 people promoting jobs,

gender equality, environmental sustainability, and so on.

This was the same, the same reason why last month during the UNGA in New York,

I launched the surging Women Employment Initiative.

And this is the main deliverable of the start for startup for me and it will create 50 500,000 jobs for women across our region from science and technology to the health and healthcare economy.

You know that healthcare economy is at the moment we badly need this, knowing that we are a longevity continent and.

Knowing that we need care workers and we have to really we have to anticipate this whenever we design our policies we have to anticipate this fact which is that we are growing older Spanish people,

I think the oldest in Europe but OK but you are a little bit better in birth rate, so fine.

Just to know that we need to stay at 2.1 per woman if we want to stay stable as we are now.

At this moment, the average rate in Europe is 1.34,

so it's a disaster at the moment. Just to make you aware of this.

So we have to support the potential of our people, where they live, where they live, and it is the core of it.

Yesterday we promoted the right to stay together with the executive Vice President Raffaele Fitto.

The right to stay could be considered as the 5th freedom of the European Union because it's fine.

We have freedom to move, but we should have also freedom to stay in order to achieve freedom.

Stay we really need to invest not only to attract businesses, but we need to invest in social infrastructure and facilities,

so kindergartens, nursery homes should be affordable and accessible to people in the region.

This is the reason why they will stay also also education, also culture,

but we have to create conditions and this is why cohesion policy is very important.

You know that we are now speaking about new MFF material Financial Framework.

It's a little bit modernized, but it doesn't mean that cohesion policy and agricultural policy will be, will be deleted and the the day after tomorrow or tomorrow,

tomorrow there will be European Council leaders will meet and this will be a very important meeting when they will start discussing on MFF.

So it's very important that you transmit the message to your.

Leaders to to support the idea of a new multiannual financial framework.

It's not only about the global Europe which I'm representing because we need money for the whole region and for global initiatives, but we need also money for people who,

who, as people from Balearic or other regions, they have the right to stay,

and this is something we have to understand and to, to promote, of course.

Growing local economy means growing energy needs, stable prices.

You know that energy prices at the moment are the hot topic, hot topic all across Europe.

We of course want to invest in renewables, and this is why we are attracting not Spanish but all European companies to come.

I'm now connecting this with my portfolio in the southern Mediterranean just to understand,

to come to invest in that part of the world where we can produce renewable energy and at a much lower price than in the.

Then in Germany, then in the Baltics and Northern Europe due to of course the lower labor costs and other issues.

So we are speaking about homegrown energy which we need to have,

not to be dependent on Russia and other fossil fuels and so on.

But at the same time we have to find ways how to produce energy.

There because they have plentitude of resources but they don't have they don't have technology,

they don't have money, they don't have funding.

The only problem is we can produce energy at 40% lower price than in Europe.

The only problem is how to import this energy to Europe, so we need to build interconnectors. This is not.

My core job,

but my job is to attract companies and then my colleague Jorgensen will come in with his energy portfolio.

So what we need to build interconnectors at the moment there is one interconnected connector being built between Tunisia and Italy because this is the shortest distance between Africa and Europe, but we need one between Spain and Morocco, another one which is In procedure of administrative barriers between Egypt and Greece, and this,

if you have an interconnectors, then we can have this energy in Europe and this Southern Mediterranean becomes very important for us, and this is not this is not the only reason,

but one of the reasons why President von der Leyen just wanted to give you a general overview why she decided to.

Stablished a new portfolio and new directorate general DG Mena is in fact because of this new philosophy around the Mediterranean. It's not, it's also about climate change.

It's also about migration, but this one is very, very important. Energy becomes the most important issue.

So precisely to support these growing energy needs, we launched TMT,

so-called TED, but it's Trans-Miterranean Renewable Energy and Clean Tech Initiative.

And this initiative brings €5 billion in guarantees to the table, and they should mobilize up to €25 billion in investments in renewable energy,

green hydrogen, clean tech manufacturing manufacturing, and modern grids, for example,

at the moment we are building helping build a grid in Egypt, for example.

These investments are mostly focused on the southern neighborhood, as I already said.

Our goal is to protect our energy security, providing the supply we need in regions with high energy demands like yours.

And we come to the 3rd point which is climate change, which you mentioned, the president, so warming.

Is 20%, 20% faster than the global average in the Mediterranean region.

You, we saw all of us, we witnessed what happened this summer.

Europe and North Africa suffered several, heat waves leading to wildfires to drought.

And in order to tackle wildfires we created, you know, we created, as you know, European firefighting hub in Cyprus which is East Mediterranean. So we want to open more hubs.

We know that there is an idea to build a hub in your region.

I think it is prudent because the East Mediterranean is too far to bring Canada Air planes if wildfire starts.

So in Cyprus we already have 6 aircraft already contributing.

And they already contributed to combat this year's fire season in Europe, also in Europe and in the region, of course.

I have to mention water which is priority for our communities, especially true for islands.

I know that you have, water reserves, but this year down to historic lows,

as you said, this is why, we are putting forward the European water resilience strategy.

Focused on improving water management across our communities,

we have a commissioner who is in charge for water which who is Swedish Swedish, colleague, Jessika Roswall.

So, everything is covered with our portfolios with our DGs, but of course we have to make it work on the ground.

Under the pact for the Mediterranean, we are preparing a new regional initiative which will be dedicated to strengthening the Mediterranean water resilience. It will be launched next year.

We want to better connect water management authorities with capacity building in the European Union and our partner countries.

Of course, information sharing is crucial to support credible, bankable water investments.

And we hope that these initiatives can support your institutions as you champion climate resilient tourism,

providing real benefits for the people across the Mediterranean, and these regions depend mainly on tourism.

It is as it is because geography cannot be changed,

but to be dependent on tourism is very risky nowadays, but this is as it is in our countries. So I only want to say that.

Migration management and security are also key priorities under the pact for the Mediterranean.

There is a commissioner who is in charge, Magnus Brunner, but I'm working on external dimension of migration. He works on the internal.

We are now, as you rightly mentioned, we adopted this pact for asylum and migration.

It's in force as of June this year.

We hope that this will help a lot, and we are now becoming more serious and more.

I think prudent when we speak about migration.

Of course I don't want to mention the Ceuta case because if I start talking about this,

it will take a whole morning,

but we are trying to see how we can better keep our external borders safe and.

A new idea which President von der Leyen proposed yesterday to the leaders in her letter on migration, as I already said they will meet tomorrow where she proposed,

and this is what she proposed also in her State of the Union speech to establish emergency mechanism so that we can launch it immediately when something like CETA happens again. I hope it won't happen anymore.

So migration is an important issue, but I don't want to broader this discussion.

At this moment we have €150 million from NDI supporting these actions under the pact, and this is complemented by additional resources which I already mentioned the Erasmus,

Horizon, Asylum, Migration Integration Fund, and there are many other EU financial instruments,

and I have to say this is just the beginning.

So this was the first iteration of the action plan.

Now, by the end of, not by the end of this month, but beginning November,

we will adopt a second iteration of action plan, which means pact is not.

Document pact is living document which is accompanied by iterations of action plan.

So it's very important to stay connected with our DG Mena, which is my directorate,

to see whether some of your projects are plausible to be integrated into this action plan,

and then they are bankable and they can be financed.

This is something which is very concrete and pragmatic, so we, we have to continue.

Our cooperation and contacts, so we, as I said, we designed the pack to be adaptable, to the needs of our regional and local communities, as I said, every 6 months no new action plan is to come,

Of course we are planning also initiatives linked to youth, to culture and climate change as I already said in Ireland,

they are mapping territorial projects and they are useful to identify,

to identify synergies and connect existing initiatives.

And we are also planning to invite the Secretariat of the Arlem Committee as an observer to the launch of this new action plan just to integrate everybody so we are very inclusive,

just to make you aware.

I think the pact can only succeed if it is owned by our regions,

by cities, universities, businesses, and our people, and, of course you are essential.

Your insight is crucial, for the pact to deliver, to see what can be changed,

what can be improved, and how we can do it.

This is why this week is very important, but I have to mention that we have also Union for the Mediterranean which is based in Barcelona.

And we are supporting this union of the Mediterranean, helping them to be pragmatic,

and they are our implementing partners on the ground. We need them.

So there is The annual meeting which is scheduled to happen to take place on the 26th of November.

It's two days prior to the elections, so I don't know whether the calendar will change, but I,

I'm looking forward not to change the calendar because it is, regardless of the government, UFM will stay.

UFM is very important, although it's not local, but just to understand, very.

Important organization politically because there are 46 members of the Mediterranean countries and some others who wanted to wanted to become members,

but this is the only organization where both Palestine and Israel sit together,

and this is important why we want to keep them together.

We want to, this is not the only reason, but politically a very important reason. So, there is much more to say.

I, I, I think my time is over.

So, looking forward to hearing your views, your ideas, and we can always, we can,

as I said, we are, pact is adapt adaptable, so we always,

we can always change. Nothing is, written in the stone. So thank you so much.