ANIMA ANNUAL CONFERENCE | Fostering Mediterranean value chains

Recent years have marked a major turning point in globalization. Re-industrialization, re-shoring and local value chains have become key words 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, have shown the need to regain sovereignty in a number of areas – Health, Food, Défense, Energy.

In addition, the environmental and climate imperative, and the introduction of carbon taxes at the European Union’s 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 in 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 Délégation interministérielle à la Méditerranée and the Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur/ 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.

Wednesday 4th December – 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm – Tour La Marseillaise

ANIMA and the Aix Marseille Provence Metropolis welcome ANIMA network members, international experts and the metropolitan industrial ecosystem.

Introductions and keynotes

Panel 1: New investment dynamics in the EMEA region

Panel 2: Implementing territorial marketing on a Euro-Mediterranean scale

Thursday 5th December – 11:30am – 1:30pm – Hotel de Région

ANIMA is organizing the Made In Terranée session as part of the SOFT conference organized by Rising Sud and the Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur Region.