Dear Friends and partners,

I would like to provide you some information about our fund raising activities in the EU framework aimed at supporting research and training in the Euro-Mediterranean basin.

First of all I would like to inform you that, 5 years after his first working experience with UNIMED, some months ago Raniero Chelli as resumed his collaboration with us and I appointed him to be the Coordinator of European projects. Over the years Raniero has acquired a deep experience in EU projects design and cooperated with several University Departments (among which Sapienza of Rome) and he is teaching "EU projects design" with several training institutions.

We recently had some meetings in Brussels both with DG Research and with EACEA (the Commission's agency for training, audiovisual and culture) as regards the TEMPUS programme.

As concerns DG Research we were given interesting information for the euro-Mediterranean cooperation regarding new calls for proposals expected in July 2011 covering diverse scientific fields such as Transport, Energy, Environment, Water resources, Agro-food; furthermore the publication of new calls for proposals for the BILAT programme (focusing on Morocco and Jordan) and INCONET is expected.

We will analyse in depth these opportunities and the related information as soon as they become available, but in advance we would like to invite you to inform us about your interest in any of the above mentioned items.

Regarding TEMPUS, there are important news about the next call. In fact it should be published already in October with a deadline in February 2012, earlier than last year.

The funding allocated to the Mediterranean countries might be significantly increased, probably and partly as a consequence of the current political situation in the area.

This is why I would like to start already now to cooperate for the definition of projects and proposals which could be jointly discussed during the UNIMED General Assembly (scheduled from the 7th to the 9th of July in Lecce, Italy).

The importance of the role the National Tempus Offices (NTO) in defining the local and regional priorities has been once more reaffirmed, therefore if you feel that there are some shortcomings in last year's priorities' definitions, we recommend to contact your NTO's as soon as possible in order to improve and enrich the said priorities.

We will circulate in the near future our ideas on the future TEMPUS programming, but we would like to receive your inputs and/or proposals at your earliest convenience.

A new section dedicated to the TEMPUS programme will be added In the near future we to our website with additional information and relevant publications made available by EACEA.

Furthermore we will invite a number of EU Commission and EACEA Officials to take part in the General Assembly, thus creating the opportunity to share and improve our knowledge of the different programmes and more in general to get a closer view to the Commission's trends and orientations.

We will keep you posted about the General Assembly planning and we invite you from now on to confirm your participation in order to strengthen our cooperation.
Our intention this time is to make the Assembly an event gathering the persons in charge of the International Relationships and Project Management Offices also together with the Rectors and their Delegates.

Last but not least we will shortly be circulating our planning for training paths dedicated to the Members and focusing on EU projects' design and management.
Looking forward to hearing from you I remain

Sincerely yours

Marcello Scalisi
Executive Director
UNIMED Universities Mediterranean Union