Helping to raise awareness about European Union cooperation and relations in the Southern Mediterranean region

EU Neighbours South

EU Neighbours South is a regional communication program initiated by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR). It seeks to rebuild the ties between the EU and its Southern Neighbourhood  ̶  a collection of countries including Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia.

For the program, we’re helping develop information campaigns and communication materials aimed at improving people’s awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the EU’s values and its multiple initiatives in the region. With a focus on young people, policy and opinion makers, the media, and civil society organizations, our team assesses public perception of the EU and its projects through opinion polling and media monitoring. We also support a trilingual website (English, French, and Arabic) that acts as a hub of information on EU cooperation and relations within the region. Following the successful implementation of our first contract with DG NEAR, our partnership was renewed for the current phase of the program.

EU Neighbours South earned a nomination for the 2022 SABRE Awards EMEA, in recognition of “Speak Up Culture!”, a campaign dedicated to open social media competitions for content creators. We designed it that way to give young people from different cultures a fresh and collaborative space for creativity, self-expression, and open discussions about freedom of speech, disinformation, democracy, and human rights. Through “Speak Up Culture!”, we launched the first edition of the TANDEM Media Awards, a competition that invited journalists, journalism students, and artists to create content in pairs. Young artists also participated in a comic strip contest that culminated in a book featuring all their artworks. The TANDEM Media Awards ceremony in Tunisia generated over 230,000 engagements and a reach of more than 1,800,000 on social media alone.

Other ongoing campaigns, such as #InTheirEyes and #WeareinBrussels, bring together some of the region’s top influencers and content creators to participate as goodwill ambassadors for the EU.