MedCities has been very active over the last six years in two horizontal projects of the InterregMED programme, leading the Urban Transports Community and managing the Communication work package of the Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community respectively. Both Interreg Med Programme projects are closing at the end of this year, and we thank and extend our gratitude to any city member of the network having participated and contributed to the successes of both initiatives. MedCities can now announce that the network will be involved in the Interreg Euro-MED programme in the next years as a partner for the two following governance projects: Green Living Areas Thematic Community Project and of the Institutional Dialogue Partnership for Protecting, restoring and valorising the natural environment and heritage.

As far as the Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community (MBPC) is concerned, the latest two newsletters were sent before the end of the year. Also, during these last months, there were still some events going on as the one about cetacean conservation in the Mediterranean, held in collaboration with the Pelagos Sanctuary in which more than 70 participants gathered online to exchange on the activities carried out by the MBPC to support the Permanent Secretariat of the Pelagos Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is a marine area of 87,500 sq. km, highly exposed to maritime traffic, subject to an agreement between Italy, Monaco, and France to work for the protection of marine mammals.

The community was present at the COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh with the session: “Mediterranean Biodiversity Challenges: Acting Again Marine Litter”?, also the MBPC did not miss the opportunity to raise its voice at the COP15 in Montreál where the focus was on the Talk4Nture session: ‘The SAIS-EBSA transferable process: A transboundary governance framework for the sustainable management of the South Adriatic Ionian Strait EBSA (SAIS-EBSA)’. You can see the full session here.

In both international events, the MBPC could underline some of the most recent and important results that have been assembled in the final policy paper.

The Urban Transports Community project delivered also the last two newsletters with the latest activities, announcing the latest activities implemented by the project. Here you can learn about the community’s final event, held in Athens and which gathered over 30 local representatives from across the Mediterranean area. Finally, the project has focused the last months of work on the publication of a number of policy briefs, which are now being translated into French, Italian, Greek, Catalan, Albanian (stay tuned). These briefs gather and summarise the project’s main policy recommendations in the field of active mobility, e-mobility, mobility in touristic areas, and the resilience of the sector against climate change.