MEDiterranean PROspects

Jean Louis Reiffers is « Professeur Agregé » in International Economics at the University of Toulon-Var and Associate Professor at Euromed Management. He is president of the Second Chance School, president of the Scientific Council of the Institut de la Méditerrannée and coordinator of the FEMISE’s scientific council. Jean Louis Reiffers was born on September 26th 1941 and obtained his PhD in international economics and finance in 1969. He then became “Professeur Agregé” in 1970 and Dean as well as Vice President of the Aix-Marseille II Faculty of Economics. IN 1970 and for the next 10 years Prof. Reiffers was Director of the Centre of Economics and International Finance (CEFI/CNRS). He was also adviser to the French Minister of Education, Mrs. Edith Cresson. With the help of Marseilles’ regional authorities he created the “Institut de la Méditerrannée” in 1993 of which he became president of the scientific council in order to contribute to the definition of the wide euro mediterranean region. In 1995, he is appointed by the European Commission as president of the working group on education and training. He then contributed to setting of the first Europe’s Second Chance School as he had already proposed in the white paper on education. He is president of the school since 2001. In 1997, in collaboration with Cairo’s Economic Reseach Forum, he created the FEMISE network of which he is president of the scientific council. The FEMISE network gathers today 85 research institutions from the Euromed process. He is author of numerous books and manages the annual reports on the Euromed Partnership published by FEMISE.

Dr. Frederic Blanc is currently the General Manager of the Femise, euromed network of Economics institutes, supported by the European Commission. He is also Chief Economist of the Institut de la Mediterranee (since October 2001, French NGO localised in Marseilles which coordinates the Femise network jointly with ERF since 1997). PhD in 1996, A. von Humboldt fellow (post-doc in 1997 in Frankfurt am Main, Goethe Universität), he entered then Institut de la Mediterranee in 1997. He took the responsibility of the Femise project in 2001, became Team Leader in 2005, when the Femise was transformed into a NGO. Contributor to all Femise Euromed reports of which the 2009 reports on Mediterranean Countries Facing the Crisis, he also contributes to Plan Bleu – EIB study, “Climate change and energy in the Mediterranean” (2008), coordinates the Femise research on “the Challenge of the employment in the Mediterranean Countries (2007), contributes to World Bank Institute researches on Knowledge Economies in Mena Region with Prof. Reiffers (2003), to IFRI report for European Commission DG Trade, “The World Trade in 21st century” (2002).

Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science- Cairo University since August 2008, and Professor of Economics, Cairo University since 1995.
My main areas of specialization are macroeconomic analysis and labor market research. During the last 20 years I have been heavily involved in conducting economic surveys. The fields of research varied and included several topics such as labor market research projects, micro and small enterprises surveys, empirical studies on industrial enterprises especially in the areas of textiles and electronics, industrial complexes/clusters. In the last seven years I got engaged in socio-economic household surveys and socio-economic and political polls.

The latest research papers and reports were:

• El Mahdi, A., 2009, "The repercussions of the Financial Crisis on the Economic Activity and Employment, in the conference on:Social Implications of the Economic Crisis on the Egyptian Economy and the ways out of it”, Center of Economic and Financial Research and Studies, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A., etal, 2009, "A Survey Study of the Implications of the Application of Quality Assurance Programs on the Improvement of Education", for the Quality Assurance Program, Ministry of Higher Education, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A., etal, 2008, "Science and Technology in a sample of Private Sector Companies in Egypt", Ministry of Higher Education, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A. etal, 2008, Egypt’s Human Development Report 2008, Ministry of Economic Development and UNDP, Cairo
• El Mahdi, A. and H.El Said,Ed.,(2007), The Role of Financial and Non-financial Services in Supporting MSMEs in Egypt, CEFRS and the Egyptian Banking Institute, Cairo.
• El Mahdi,A. & M. Metwally, Ed.,(2007), Evaluation of the Privatization Program in Egypt (1992-2006), UNDP and Center for Economic and Financial Research and Studies, Cairo.

Dr. Rym Ayadi is the coordinator of MEDPRO, member of the scientific bureau and WP6- Financial services and capital markets leader.
Dr. Rym Ayadi is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Research of the Financial Institutions, Prudential Policy and Tax Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies since 2001. She holds a PhD in economics and finance at the University Paris Dauphine. Previous to CEPS, she was economist at the French banking association in Paris and at the European Commission in Directorate General Economics and Financial Affairs. She also lectured industrial economics and game theory at university of Lille II and at the university Paris Dauphine in France and international financial institutions & markets and financial & risk analysis at the International Business School of the Isle of Man. Rym Ayadi has authored several books and papers on financial market regulation and integration in Europe. Recently, she has developed a particular interest for South Mediterranean Region and Africa with a focus on business and financial markets development, SME financing, foreign direct investment and trade. She acted as a senior expert in several projects on the regions e.g. the Euro-Mediterranean Charter development and evaluation, EU-Mediterranean Partnership evaluation, banking and financial markets developments and regulation in economies in transition, competition policy and economic integration in the Mediterranean region. She managed several projects on financial services, trade, enterprise, consumer and foreign policies funded by the European Union institutions; she is senior expert of several expert groups set by the European Commission on financial services policies and external advisor to the European Parliament on banking regulation, crisis management and Euro-med relations. She is “Rapporteur” for several high-level CEPS working parties, Vice President of the European Financial Inclusion Network (EFIN), a European network that promotes mutual learning on financial inclusion and invited lecturer in several European universities.
 

Dr. Manfred Hafner has a more than 20 years international carrier in the energy sector and in particular on the Mediterranean region. He presently coordinates energy policy activities at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM); is President for Europe, MENA, Russia and CIS at International Energy Consultants (IEC); and teaches energy economics, markets and policy at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, the Institut Français du Pétrole, HEC-Paris and the Florence School of Regulation. Until early 2008 he was for many years the Scientific Director of OME (Observatoire Méditerranéen de l’Energie – a think tank and association of some 35 major energy operators in the Euro-Mediterranean area). Dr. Hafner has consulted extensively on energy issues for industry, governments and international organizations and coordinated several large research projects for the European Commission. He holds master degrees in energy engineering, economics and policy from the Technische Universität München (Germany), the Insitut Français du Pétrole (France), the Université Paris2/Panthéon Assas (France) and the University of Pennsylvania (USA). He also holds a PhD from the Ecole des Mines de Paris. He speaks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

Graduated at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, he received a Master degree in economics from the University College of London (UK) and a Doctoral degree in economics from the University of Venice. He is presently assistant professor of economics at the University Statale of Milan, associate researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) of Milan and affiliate scientist at the Euromediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC). His main interests are focused on climate-change policy and modelling with particular emphasis on negotiation aspects of international environmental agreements and on optimal policy design considering adaptation and mitigation options. He is currently involved in EU projects like CIRCE, SESAME and CLIMATECOST aiming at climate change economic impact assessment in the Mediterranean regions.

Prof. Pantelis Capros heads the E3MLab of ICCS. He is a Professor of Energy Economics and Operation Research at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National Technical University of Athens. He has built and used a variety of large-scale mathematical models and has more than 20 years professional experience of consultancy in the domain of energy and economic policy. For the MEDPRO project, E3MLAB will use and apply the GEM-E3 general equilibrium model. In particular, the model version developed already for the integrated FP6 research project CIRCE studying impacts of climate change on the Mediterranean economic and ecological system.

Luc De Wulf, a Belgian national obtained his economic degree at the Katholieke Universiteit van Leuven, Belgium, and a PhD in Economics from Clark University, Worcester, Mass., USA. After a two-year teaching assignment at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, he joined the International Monetary Fund, where he worked both in the Fiscal Affairs and the Asian Departments. He transferred to the World Bank in 1988, where he worked in both the African and Middle Eastern Departments as macro economist with a focus on fiscal and trade issues. Upon his retirement from the World Bank in 2000, he worked as consultant with the Trade Department and WBI. In that capacity he managed the Diagnostic Trade Integration Studies for Mauritania and Senegal, and supported a variety of customs modernization initiatives financed by the World Bank and other bilateral development agencies. He is the author of numerous scientific articles that appeared in professional journals. More recently he co-edited with Jose Sokol, two books: Customs Modernization Initiatives (World Bank 2004) and Customs Modernization Handbook (World Bank 2005). The latter publication is available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese.

Dr. George Groenewold is a demographer at NiDi. Before, he worked at FAO (Regional Advisory Services for the Middle East and West Asia) providing support to institutions in the region on Population and Development issues in the context of Rural Development. At NiDi, his research covers, among others, international migration from African and Middle Eastern countries to Europe. He also carries out training missions in the region on demographic analysis, including population projection methods and software applications.

Nathalie Tocci (BA Oxford, MSc and PhD LSE) is Senior Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, Washington and the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome. She is also Associate Editor of The International Spectator. She has held previous research positions at the Centre for European Policy Studies and the European University Institute. Her research interests include European foreign policy, conflict resolution, Transatlantic relations and the European neighborhood, with a particular focus on Turkey, Cyprus, the Mediterranean and the South Caucasus. Nathalie is the winner of the 2008 Anna Lindh award for the study of European foreign policy. Her book publications include: Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads (with T. Diez eds) 2009, The EU and Conflict Resolution: Promoting Peace in the Backyard, 2007, EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution: Catalyzing Peace or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus?, 2004, Towards Accession Negotiations: Turkey’s Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges Ahead (with A. Evin eds) 2004.