The Accademia del Mediterraneo and Maison de la
Méditerranée (AdM & MdM) is intended to be a process of enhancement, exploiting to the full the cultural, scientific,
social and economic-financial resources of the multiform and complex network of
institutions brought into being by the dynamism of the Fondazione Laboratorio
Mediterraneo - Onlus .
The fundamental asset consists in the opportunity for relations and exchanges covering, to a
greater or lesser degree, all the countries of the Euromediterranean region,
set up over the last decade thanks to the formal adhesion of:
·
Outstanding personalities active in politics,
including serving heads of state;
·
Representatives of Euromediterranean culture in
its manfold expressions, and in particular members of academe (including the
leading figures in National Academies) historians, writers, opinion leaders
well-known in their own country and worldwide, Nobel prize winners;
·
Governments in office in Regions, Province and
Cities (headed by Seville), including some of the major metropolises around the
Mediterranean;
·
Over 200 Cultural and Research Institutions
active in social, civil and religious fields;
·
168 Universities, including some of the oldest
and most prestigious in Europe (headed by the University of Bologna);
In all 561 institutions and organisms are
involved, belonging to 33 Euromediterranean countries. They can be contacted
via the IT infrastructures and the initiatives undertaken by the Fondazione
Laboratorio Mediterraneo, creating an active partnership working on concrete
projects for transforming the Euromediterranean scenario. This partnership will
take shape through the Action Plans dscribed above.
The proposal to become associates has been
widely taken up not only in the partner countries throughout the Mediterranean
but also in communities in Southern Europe and in Southern Italy in particular.
The proposal formulated by AdM & MdM has so far seen the adhesion of 186
local and regional European institutions, while 97 Italian comunes have stated
they wish to set up topical venues. In the Regione Campania alone, 80 comunes
have adhered to the network: 49 want to set up a topical bureau and 31 others
have drawn up specific projects with a Euromediterranean slant to be
implemented using the network of solidarity set up by the Fondazione
Laboratorio Mediterraneo for AdM & MdM.
As can be seen from the contents and the
adhesions of institutions, the network is strategic for setting up and
developing Euromediterranean partnership. Each of these institutions
constitutes a potential relational circuit, able to call on politicians,
officials and experts, in order to identify, coordinate and programme
development plans of general interest. This will enable all the partners in the
various countries to be protagonists, guaranteeing a role in the decision-making and direction of the
process, as recommended by the Conference of Valencia.
In conclusion, the methodology of associates in
Europartnership proposed by AdM & MdM draws heavily on the idea of “factual
democracy”: recognising (and not contrasting) the right to empower each member
endowed with dynamic potential, and assisting the need the of promoting the creation, within the
network itself, of other institutions of reference. In turn these will be able
to proceed autonomously to adopt cultural and institutional initiatives which
can be recycled in the comprehensive
circuit of AdM & MdM to augment the operative and financial resources of
the enterprises and extend the circuits of enhancement and application.
Thus proposals can be both “top-down”
(originating with the network’s central organs) and “bottom-up” (originating on
the initiative of members or sectorial groupings). The propagation of the
effects is self-generating, because the results of any initiative can be used
free of charge (capitalised) by one or more operators for further projects, the
benefits of which are fed back, thanks to the network of enhancement, so as to
benefit the instigators of the cycle. Thus external financing of just one
initiative in the context of the network of relationships produces multiple
benefits of enhancement: this is the “invisible hand” which regulates the
processes of expansion of exchanges connected with partnerships in which the
moral component is predominant.