The European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), is a consortium institution which possesses a legal personality and full legal capacity for attainment of its objectives. The consortium’s members are the Government of Catalonia, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and Barcelona City Council. It also has a Board of Trustees consisting of companies, universities and organisations from civil society, and an Advisory Council whose members are Mediterranean experts of acknowledged repute.
Since its formation in 1989, the European Institute of the Mediterranean, IEMed, has set itself the goal of becoming a think-tank specialised in Euro-Mediterranean relations. Using a multidisciplinary approach and extensive networking, the IEMed promotes analysis, knowledge and cooperation through the organisation of seminars, research projects, debates, lecture cycles and publications, complemented with a broad programme of cultural activities.
The objective of the European Institute of the Mediterranean is to promote actions and projects contributing to mutual knowledge, exchanges and cooperation between the different Mediterranean countries, societies and cultures, and to foster a space of peace and stability, shared prosperity and dialogue between cultures and civilisations in the Mediterranean, thus contributing to the core aims of the Mediterranean foreign policy and the Euro-Mediterranean policy of the EU: the Union for the Mediterranean and the European Neighbourhood Policy.
A fundamental pillar for action at IEMed is the organisation of major high-level international conferences aimed at making the Mediterranean policies promoted by the EU more widely known. IEMed has organised many conferences principally in the socio-economic, Mediterranean policy, human development and civil society arenas such as the first Euromed Civil Forum (1995) which was attended by 1,200 participants from 38 countries. The World Congress on Middle Eastern Studies –WOCMES, held in Barcelona in July 2010, programmed more than 500 academic sessions on a wide range of disciplines and issues on the Middle East and Noth Africa, including political and economical aspects, the environment, literature, history, gender issues, religion, town planning, contemporary artistic creation and identities with a large participation of more than 2700 experts. As well the IEMed organized in March 2010 the Anna Lindh Forum for the Intercultural Dialogue with more than 1000 participants and representatives from 43 Anna Lindh Foundation network countries.
Likewise, since its beginnings IEMed has placed special importance on its publications, websites and multimedia formats as a way of fostering understanding among the societies of both shores of the Mediterranean. In this regard, it is appropriate to highlight a series of periodic reference publications that make up a significant part of its productive work: the Mediterranean Yearbook, the semi-annual magazine Quaderns de la Mediterrània, the quarterly magazine Afkar/ideas and the collection of Papers IEMed.
