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5 December 2024
Marseille, France
Recent years have marked a major turning point in globalization. Re-industrialization, re-shoring, and local value chains have become keywords in the discourse of economists and political decision-makers, expressing, if not a trend, rather a desire to bring production closer to the consumer.
The COVID-19 health crisis, followed by the war in Ukraine, has shown the need to regain sovereignty in a number of areas â Health, Food, defense, and Energy.
In addition, the environmental and climate imperative, and the introduction of carbon taxes at the European Unionâs borders (CBAM), are also encouraging shorter value chains and cleaner production methods.
Finally, new industrial technologies (IoT, robotization, AI) are also making it possible to gain competitiveness and making it less justifiable to relocate the production of many products and services to countries with very low labor costs.
This new context is an opportunity for countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Most of them have free-trade agreements with the European Union, which is not the case for their Asian competitors, and North African countries are also part of the new African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
In addition, productivity and cost-competitiveness in the southern Mediterranean are on a par with, and often even more attractive than, those in China, Vietnam, or Bangladesh.
Is this momentum already perceptible in the countries of the Mediterranean basin? What role do Europeans play in these regional value chains? Can clusters help to accelerate the industrial upmarket to seize the momentum?
To address these questions, the ANIMA network is organizing several conferences and workshops in Marseille on December 4 and 5, as part of the European Euromed Clusters Forward project, in partnership with the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, the DĂ©lĂ©gation interministĂ©rielle Ă la MĂ©diterranĂ©e and the Provence Alpes CĂŽte dâAzur/ Rising Sud Region. These meetings will bring together public agencies, business associations, industrialists, clusters, and economists to reflect on these issues and draw up action plans.
