Barcelona will host over the next few months, coinciding with the Spanish presidency of the European Union this second half of 2023, a dozen events, high-level meetings, conferences and seminars included in the program prepared by Pedro's acting Government. Sanchez. The Catalan capital will be, after Madrid, the city that will host the most activities on a very decentralized agenda, which includes sectoral events in many Spanish provincial capitals.
The choice of Barcelona as the venue for a long series of meetings is not coincidental. It obeys the interest of the City Council, and in particular of the new government of the socialist mayor Jaume Collboni, to return to situate this city in the axis of "European activism", explains Pau Solanilla, commissioner of International Relations and Economic Promotion of the City Council.
In the last government commission of the Consistory, at the end of July, before the start of the holidays, a report was presented on the impact of the Spanish presidency of the EU in Barcelona. It frames the holding of this type of international meeting in Barcelona as an example of the “institutional normality” that the minority government that emerged from the mayor's investiture session on June 17 wants to permeate the Barcelona agenda after a long period marked by the instability associated with the attacks of August 2017, the independence process and the limitations on activity imposed by the pandemic.
Likewise, the aim is to correct the trend of the previous municipal mandate, in which, although it is true that Barcelona played an active role in various international forums, greater dynamism was lacking in the relationship with community institutions. “Barcelona's European capital status is time to exercise it, not just claim it,” says the head of international relations at the City Council.
Having already held some meetings related to the field of health, Barcelona's European program for this semester begins its period of greatest intensity this week with the Forum of Universities for the Future of Europe. It will be followed by various meetings sponsored by the ministries of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation; Work and Social Economy; Science and Innovation; Equality (a seminar on people of African descent and their recognition and rights, on November 2 and 3); Treasury and Public Service; and Health.
One of the most notable events of this Barcelona program of the Spanish presidency of the European Union is scheduled for September 21 and 22, with the informal meeting of the Transport Ministers of the Twenty-Seven, which will take place in the modernist venue of the Sant Pau hospital.
Another notable moment will occur on November 27 and 28 with the celebration of the Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean, which aspires to relaunch an institution that emerged from the so-called Barcelona process and which will be accompanied on those same dates by the meeting in the Catalan capital of the 54 foreign ministers of the countries on both sides of the Mediterranean and a forum of mayors from the same region. Before, on November 8, the meeting of the presidency and European mayors will take place, with the support of Eurocities.
