Shaping a New Atlantic Hemisphere for the 21st Century

The Atlantic Hemisphere is a space with a common history of more than 500 years of multiple interactions and exchanges between the different regions along the Ocean. These connections are being reshaped due to the drastic changes taking place as a result of globalisation, growing interdependences and the diffusion of power among heterogeneous actors. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new governance structures and practices that can provide and defend common goods in an efficient manner.  

The new EU Global Strategy presented last summer stresses the commitment to support cooperative regimes worldwide including both, the North and the South of the Atlantic, based on particular shared goals. In this context, the Atlantic offers opportunities to enhancing and fostering a regional cooperative framework that could represent an example to other regions. Transnational security risks, stagnant conflicts, the refugee’s crisis, the Atlantic energy renaissance and the future elections in the United States and some European States open a window of opportunity to reaffirm the importance of the wider transatlantic relations. Moreover, the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations and the Climate Change Agreement reached in the Paris Summit last year, set a new framework for collaboration in the region. The current social and political environment in the Atlantic Space brings new risk but also opportunities to promote cooperative approaches built upon shared interests.  

Based on the results of the Atlantic Future project - a project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme-, this seminar aims at strengthening the transatlantic dialogue and develop new cooperative regimes in those strategic areas in which the Atlantic region can make a difference. That is a new paradigm that responds to the transnational security risks, economic challenges and environmental hazards while respecting and promoting the fundamental rights and freedoms of a rule-based international order.