Euromed Committee Eurocities is a network of some one hundred European cities working together to defend the interests of metropolitan areas with EU institutions and facilitate the exchange of information and experience. On the basis of the conclusions of the Third Euro-Mediterranean Congress of Foreign Affairs Ministers held in Stuttgart on 15 & 16 April 1999 that encouraged local communities to engage in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, the City of Bordeaux convinced the Eurocities authorities to create a Euro-Mediterranean cities working group. Within this group - now a Euromed Pact committee - cities from EU member states and the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores are coming closer together, dialoguing and proposing new prospects for the development of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. The City of Bordeaux chaired and hosted the first meeting of this committee on 1 November and 31 December 2000. Two annual meetings were convened in Casablanca (14 & 15 June 2001) and Barcelona (22 & 23 February 2002). Progress meetings were also organized in Brussels (17 September 2001), Nice (December 2001) and Brussels (25 April 2002). The last meeting took place in Salé (Morocco) on 18 October 2002 and the next Steering Committee meeting will be in Lebanon in April 2003. The cities of the European Union and the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores, through their strong presence at this major meeting, have asserted their will to be active in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. They unanimously deplore that Euro-Mediterranean cooperation programmes have been stopped, following the implementation of the MED-URBS programmes in the 1990s. Thus, given the will of the European Union to activate the Euro-Mediterranean partnership in the wake of the 1995 Barcelona Declaration, it appears more crucial than ever to set up a decentralized cooperation programme between Europe and the Mediterranean, when such programmes exist between Europe and both Latin America and Asia. This is why, at the Barcelona meeting, Alain Juppé, Mayor of Bordeaux and French MP, presented a draft programme for ‘Euromed Pact’, cooperation between Euro-Mediterranean cities, accompanied by the mayors’ policy statement, to help boost the Euro-Mediterranean partnership by asserting the key role of cities. The approach of this project fits into a deliberately pan-European perspective: just as the East-West axis is not restricted to Eastern European cities, the Euro-Mediterranean axis is not restricted to circum-Mediterranean cities. We are gratified that the European Parliament, in its resolution on ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament’ preparatory to the meeting of Euro-Mediterranean Foreign Affairs Ministers on 22 & 23 April 2002 in Valencia, brought its support to the ‘Euromed Pact’. We are also pleased that the action plan adopted after the Fifth Conference of Euro-Mediterranean Ministers in Valencia approved the Euro-Mediterranean mayors’ policy statement presented by the mayor of Bordeaux in Barcelona last 22 February, and request that the European Commission carefully examine the ‘Euromed Pact’. This is why we are asking today for support from our diplomatic representations with the European Union, our national governments and the European parliament, to include the ‘Euromed Pact’ in the objectives of future MEDA regional programming.