Karim El Aynaoui, president of the influential think tank Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), attached to Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), opened the 14th edition of the Atlantic Dialogues international forum in Salé on Thursday, December 11, stressing that the countries of the South now need renewed and balanced partnerships more than ever.
On this occasion, the Policy Center for the New South unveiled the 12th edition of its annual report to a large audience of Moroccan and international academics, diplomats, political scientists, and former ministers from various backgrounds. This year's theme is: The Wider Atlantic: Building Partnerships in an Era of Instability. In his opening address, Karim El Aynaoui noted that this event is organized by the Policy Center for the New South, a unique think tank that brings together experts and researchers from around the world. He then addressed the audience, using simultaneous translation from English to French:
You are all in a Morocco that is running, but not falling.
The debates of this first day of Atlantic Dialogues were largely dominated by the major themes that run through global governance: the crisis of multilateralism, the weakening of democratic models, the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in power relations, the return of Donald Trump to the forefront of the international scene, but also the recomposition of North-South and South-South partnerships between the two sides of the Atlantic.
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Regarding the 12th report of the PCNS, the 2025 edition, coordinated by Ambassador Mohammed Loulichki, a researcher at the center, offers, according to a press release, an in-depth reflection on the dynamics at play in the wider Atlantic region. The document examines how this space can become a structuring framework for cooperation and pragmatic partnerships, at a time when geopolitical rivalries, technological transformations, and climate pressures are redefining the international order.
This new edition thus highlights the strategic role of the wider Atlantic as a platform for dialogue and the reshaping of partnerships, in a context where international instability calls for both national resilience, concerted responses and innovative forms of cooperation.
Structured around seven main sections divided into thirty-three chapters, the book brings together some forty contributions from authors in the public and private sectors, as well as international organizations, representing twenty countries, including eighteen Atlantic coastal states. In essence, this twelfth edition extends and deepens the lines of inquiry opened up by previous editions, broadening the scope of analysis to better grasp the scale of the ongoing transformations, the press release emphasizes.
The report notably highlights global competition around emerging technologies – artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, control of critical resources or deep-sea activities – which reconfigures alliances and reinforces the centrality of innovation in the geopolitical hierarchy.
By offering a structured overview of contemporary debates and emerging ideas, the PCNS believes that this latest report provides the reader with a reference tool to understand the profound recompositions of an Atlantic space in transition and to outline the contours of a more connected, more cooperative and more united future for the peoples who compose it.
The Atlantic Dialogues will continue until December 13, with a series of roundtables and thematic panels led by top-level international experts.
