The Toledo International Centre for Peace (CITpax) in collaboration with the Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània (IEMed) held a brainstorming meeting in Barcelona aimed to create a framework for regional integration for a “Community of Water and Energy in the Middle East”. The idea draws on the concept of the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the prototype of the current European Union.

The meeting involved the participation of water experts from the Middle East, such as Munther Haddadin, former Jordanian Minister of Water and Irrigation -who also came as representative of Jordan’s Prince El-Hassan bin Talaal- as well as Spanish experts.

Participants agreed that for future activities two groups will be formed to pursue the process. Group One includes participants from Palestine, Jordan, Israel and preferably Egypt; and Group Two includes, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and preferably Egypt.

There will be future meetings such as the one held in Barcelona to share views and information, and develop plans of action for the initiative. Debates will concentrate mainly but not exclusively, on the technical work of water and energy in order to contribute to increase efforts on regional conflict resolution.

The workshop was a follow up of the activities carried out in September 2008 during the seminar “Water in the Middle East: Conflict or Cooperation?”. Those meetings, held in Madrid and Zaragoza in collaboration with the Sociedad Española para Exposiciones Internacionales (SEEI), aimed to examine to what extent water has been a source of conflict and how it could be turned into a tool for peace in the Middle East.