The initiative is also intended to create conditions favourable to the harmonious combining of cultural, and particularly religious, diversity, of untrammelled freedom of conscience in every dimension, with the neutrality of the public realm. Once all these conditions are present they can ensure an inclusive process of secularisation without which racist (particularly anti-Semitic and Islamophobic) prejudices could persist. The
High-Level Group was unanimous in strongly condemning any doctrines or ideas
which legitimise any form of exclusion or discrimination to whatever end.

The High-Level Advisory Group has therefore identified and put in order of importance a number of founding principles, themselves translated into principles for action to which the dialogue between peoples and cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean area must constantly refer in order to give the neighbourhood policy a human dimension.

It is this set of principles which make up the ‘software’ of the Euro-Mediterranean foundation, the ‘specification’ of which must enable it to both set in motion, promote and coordinate all the initiatives responding to these principles, and assess whether each initiative complies with those principles.

The High-Level Advisory Group has also identified three ‘operational’ guidelines in the fields of education, mobility and the identification of best practice, and the media. It has elaborated a number of concrete proposals for each one.