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).

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.
 

Responsible of Socioeconomic Development Department at the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed). He was Responsible for the Middle East and North African region at the Consortium for Foreign Trade Promotion of Catalonia (COPCA), belonging to the Catalan Ministry of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise. Direct responsibility on the offices in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Iran operating in all the countries of this region. He was Researcher at the University Institute of European Studies (IUEE) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) analyzing relations of the EU with the Mediterranean and economic tendencies in the area. 1998-99 Working for the Spanish Foreign Trade Institute (ICEX) in the Spanish Commercial Office in Istanbul (Turkey).

Carlo SESSA is President of ISIS – Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems of Rome. Before joining ISIS in 1983, he has conducted research at NYU, where he worked with Nobel Prize winner Wassily Leontieff. He was the Coordinator of several EU research projects, in the 5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programmes, in the fields of transport, urban issues and environment. In this context, he organised several participatory foresight exercises, involving panels of experts and citizens.