Call for an EU Blue Deal - Event highlights

 The "Call for an EU Blue Deal" high-level conference that took place on the 26^th October 2023 marked an important political moment for the EESC's flagship initiative on water, calling on the European institutions to consider water as a priority and to adopt an EU Blue Deal as a standalone strategic policy, on a par with the EU Green Deal. 

The event was organised in the context of the EESC October Plenary Session, and started with an institutional debate seeing the participation of MEP Pernille Weiss, of UN Special Rapporteur on the right on water Pedro Arrojo-Agudo and Prof. Mariana Mazzucato, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. 

At the end of this debate, the EESC's President Oliver Röpke presented the Declaration for EU Blue Deal, proposing a comprehensive, coherent water policy, based on 15 guiding principles and 21 concrete actions, including a call to include the water dimension in all European policies.

The discussion continued with a three-panel conference tackling the following topics: securing access to water and resilient water infrastructures, making water consumption sustainable and fostering new opportunities, and addressing Blue financing and Blue Diplomacy. Many distinguished speakers from European and International organisations and stakeholders intervened, including representatives of the European Youth Parliament for Water, of FAO and of the Union for the Mediterranean. 

The event was an occasion to exchange with leading experts on the most pressing water-related challenges now and in the years to come, and to discuss the state of play regarding existing policies and the need for an EU Blue Deal. 

This conference was not the end of EESC's work on the EU Blue Deal, but rather the start of a long series of collaborations with many organisations and stakeholders, in order to promote an even stronger and larger call for a new strategic approach to water policies at European level.

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