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	Opening Remarks By Dr. Jean Boissonnas Professor Eleftheriou, thank you for your kind words about MAST in your introduction. This is the second Mediterranean Targeted Workshop in a series, and I have a few questions to put to all of you starting with: Will the second one be a success? If you have produced a first novel, will the second be as successful? If you have done one parachute jump, will the second one be even more frightening? And if you organise the second in a series of workshops, how will it go? We know that just over a year ago, the Barcelona workshop went quite well. Knowing the amount of work that has gone into it, and the level of attendance, and the amount of organisation from all my colleagues, I'm already betting on the success of the present one. Innovation After the Barcelona Workshop, on this occasion we are not simply consolidating, but in some ways we are also innovating. One aspect of innovation that is taking place is in the form of participation. We are fortunate in being able to welcome for the first time participants who are not members of the European Union and this, as I'm going to explain, is politically, and also scientifically, a very important development . Euro-Mediterranean Partnership These days there is a good deal of talk in political circles, and there are also certain actions, concerning the so-called Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. High on the agenda of these discussions is the topic of cooperation in science and technology. This was particularly emphasised, in March 1995, at a conference in Sofia Antipolis in southern France. The initiative to strengthen scientific cooperation originally came from France , but it will be strongly carried through by the chain of successive EU Chair countries; France was in the position of chairing the EU at the time of the first initiative, and was followed by Spain and now by Italy. All these countries are committed to pushing the matter forward. Background If we look at the developments in this area, we have to recognise that we do not start from nothing or from nowhere. There were already in the 80s some preliminary pilot ventures in cooperation around the Mediterranean, with the European Union, but those ventures were oriented towards agriculture and health research. Developments - AVICENNE However, the most important development came in 1992 with the launching of the AVICENNE programme. This came from an initiative of the European Parliament. One of the objectives of AVICENNE was to explore the potential for collaboration between laboratories in the European Union and in the Mediterranean so-called third countries. The topics that were open for research under AVICENNE were: protection of the environment, health , renewable energies and the treatment of water. One project on oceanography was launched and is being carried out in close cooperation with MAST. Some of the participants are here today. To date, what we can see coming out of AVICENNE is encouraging. First of all, scientists in the European Union have been able to identify partners in the countries on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. And also, within the European Union, it is not just the Mediterranean countries, France, Spain, Italy and Greece, that have expressed interest, but it is scientists from all over the Union, because the Union is committed to act as a whole, and not just on behalf of some of its member countries. Budget for Euro-Partnership Now at present, what do we have? We have some activities, some possibilities provided by the Framework Programme of which MAST is one of the components. The budget for this type of cooperation does not come from the MAST Programme itself, but comes from a special budget line for international cooperation. The topics covered here are: management of renewable natural resources, environmental problems, agriculture and agro-in dustry, and health and medicine. Other Partnership Programmes But apart from these activities in the Framework Programme, there are some initiatives in the so-called MEDA Programme. This is another scheme which is not part of the research package. However, you might have heard of some of its activities, e.g., MEDCAMPUS, which is a scheme for collaboration between universities, and MEDTECHNO, a scheme for the transfer of technologies. May I remind you of what was said earlier, about acceleration which was decided last year at the conference in Sofia Antipolis. Mediterranean Targeted Project Now let us return to the Mediterranean Targeted Project, the subject of this present conference. The MTP was initially launched quite independently from all the activities I have just mentioned, AVICENNE, MEDA, MEDCAMPUS and MEDTECHNO. It was launched on its own merits as part of the contents of the MAST Programme. You can now see, given all that I've just explained, that the MTP is politically very timely, in that it fits in very well with the overall scheme of the commitment of the European Union to improve cooperation all around the Mediterranean. And it also shows why we have tried to ensure the participation here of those other countries. In the follow-up to MTP1, that is in MTP2, we will have the participation of some of those countries. That is yet another innovation. Greek Office Of IOC Before I give the floor to the next speaker, I would like to give you the essentials of a message which I have just received from the IOC, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Some of you are aware that a major conference of the IODE, (the scheme for International Oceanographic Data Exchange) was held in Athens last week. At that meeting Greek officials and the IOC Executive Secretary defined areas of common interest and activities that could be jointly undertaken. Greece expressed strong support for IOC activities. ITS delegate will be your colleague George Chronis. In the message I received today, it was stressed that there is much ground for cooperation between IOC and MAST in the Mediterranean. Not only to see what joint activities we could undertake but also to avoid potential overlaps. Further Areas Of Cooperation One more thing: we are also going to explore how to tighten relations, not only with the IOC, but also with CIESM, and I think that a meeting will be scheduled in the near future about this. So you see, things are beginning to be packaged quite nicely in the Mediterranean. And now I would like to hand over to my colleague Mrs Elizabeth Lipiatou, to introduce the scientific part of the workshop.
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