Spain has welcomed the Joint Communication presented today with satisfaction, which proposes a new Agenda for the Mediterranean that includes an Economic and Investment Plan that seeks to relaunch and strengthen the strategic association between the EU and its partners in the Southern Neighbourhood. This is formed by Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia. Spain has decisively supported the EU institutions, exercising a leadership role in the process to relaunch these relations.

Spain considers the importance that this Communication grants the Southern Neighbourhood for Europe to be particularly important, as well as mutual interdependence, which has been made even clearer with the pandemic; along with the proposal to step up political dialogue with our partners to the south.

To boost this dynamic and support the EU institutions throughout the process, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation offered the EU and her counterparts in September 2020 to host the European Union-Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting that finally took place in Barcelona on 26 November 2020. This led to the holding of an enriching exercise in joint reflection with a view to relaunching and strengthening relations, and which led to the issue of this Joint Communication, which has been presented today.

We share the vision of the current situation with the European Union which offers a chance to relaunch relations based on this new Agenda with new areas and ways to cooperate that will allow their potential to be harnessed, including bilaterally with each of the partner countries.

Spain will continue to decisively support the relaunch of relations between the EU and the Southern Neighbourhood, particularly in the political areas on which the Agenda is structured: human development, good governance and the rule of law; strengthening resilience, the creation of prosperity and harnessing the digital transition; peace and security; migration and mobility; and the ecological transition: resilience to climate change, energy and the environment.