This summit will contribute to enhancing the psychological perception, behaviours and vision of both parties' economic players, thereby laying the foundations for a new partnership culture.

Thus, regular political dialogue between Moroccan and European heads of states and governments will be held alternately between the two sides of the Mediterranean.

This summit represents a concrete implementation of the advanced status granted to Morocco in 2008, opening the door wide for strategic partnership between the two parties.

Relations between Morocco and Europe are marked by forty years of common history, though shaken by some conflicts and tensions concerning particularly agricultural and fisheries products.

The first phase in relations started with the signing of a trade agreement in 1969, ten years after the birth of the six-country Europe in Rome. The second, an association agreement, dates back to the year 2000 and was a quantum leap in their relations.

However, this experience showed the limits of the European approach: free trade logic alone exacerbates the imbalanced trade and disparities between the north and the south.

Hence, a more global and coherent vision, integrating the political, cultural and human dimensions, has become a necessity, that is to say going beyond the standard undifferentiated agreements which neglect the particularities of each country concerned.

The third phase comes with the granting of the advanced status, which crowns a long process of moving from a sectoral vision to a strategic one.

This phase coincided to the expansion of the EU which counts today 27 countries, against six half a decade ago. It is the Europe of Lisbon treaty: new borders, new aspirations and new constraints.

Today, with this reality, the proximity of Europe has other implications, under the combined effect of globalization, the rise of new regional groupings and the new threats that weigh heavy on the region.

It is in this context that the advanced status presents itself as a convergence agreement. It is an asset but a test at the same time. It represents long-term integration in the European economic space thanks to mechanisms and terms that have yet to be defined.

In addition to the political, institutional and economic instruments, this convergence agreement requires audacious financing. Son, why not repeat the experience of European structural funds to accelerate the modernization of the Moroccan economy.