Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured yesterday from Andorra, on the occasion of the celebration of the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, that Spain intends to donate vaccines against COVID-19 to Latin American countries “as soon as possible”.
The Chief Executive made this announcement through his Twitter account, in which he assured that the Ibero-American Summit will address “the need to get out of the emergency by guaranteeing equitable vaccination throughout the world” and that “Spain will donate, as soon as possible, vaccines to Latin America to boost the fight against COVID-19”.
In this regard, the Government spokesperson and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, said during the press conference after the Council of Ministers that Sánchez will take advantage of his intervention in the Ibero-American forum (to be held today in Andorra) to announce that “Spain will make vaccines available to Latin America” and that the intention of the Spanish Executive is to “coordinate this action with the European Union so that the doses arrive as soon as possible to the countries that need them as a priority”.
Sánchez’s announcement coincided with his participation in a conversation between the heads of State and Government present in Andorra, which served as the closing event of the XIII Ibero-American Business Meeting, prior to the Ibero-American Summit. During the closing of this meeting, which focused on innovation for sustainable development and recovery after COVID-19, King Philip VI assured that, “thanks to the strong historical, cultural, linguistic and economic ties that unite Latin America with Spain”, our country wishes to “play a role of the greatest possible relevance in the recovery process of Ibero-America” .
“Working together, the foreign sector can once again be the great economic dynamo that drives recovery in both continents“, the Monarch declared. “In this sense, the EU’s trade agreements with Latin American countries, which Spain has always strongly promoted within the Community, can play a key role”, he continued. “The modernization of the existing ones, the progress of those already agreed but pending ratification, or the best use of those that have been in force for a relatively short time, will be a great support for the recovery of our economies”, he added, referring to the negotiations of the trade agreement with Mercosur and the process of modernization of the friendship agreement with Chile and the trade agreement with Mexico.
For his part, Pedro Sánchez said during the conversation that “one lesson that Spain learned from the 2008 financial crisis is that there is no recovery if there is no process of internationalization of economic activity” and, therefore, “Europe and the Ibero-American community have a great deal to do next year to consolidate the agreements between the two blocs”. In this regard, the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, said that one of the main objectives of the Portuguese Presidency of the EU is to “make progress” in concluding agreements with Chile, Mexico and Mercosur.
At the same meeting, the Prime Minister of Andorra, Xavier Espot, called for “equal access to vaccines as the only solution to overcome the pandemic”, and the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, asked the EU to “seek the support of the International Monetary Fund to create a new financial system” to enable economic recovery in middle-income countries.
Presidents of Guatemala and Dominican Republic: “COVAX has failed”.
For his part, the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, thanked the King and Sánchez for Spain’s collaboration in the transfer to his country of five modular hospitals and denounced, in a much more critical tone, that the COVAX system (the COVID-19 Global Vaccine Access Fund) “has failed” because of “the irresponsibility of a small group of countries that have kept all the vaccines”. Likewise, the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, also criticized “the failure of the COVAX system” and asked that the economic crisis of the pandemic does not lead to “a financial crisis that could destabilize our countries socially” and that “penalizes the capacity for growth and job creation”.
The event concluded with the reading of a series of recommendations from the Business Meeting, read by the President of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi; the President of the International Organization of Employers (IOE), Erol Kiresepi; and the president of the Andorran Business Confederation (CEA) and president pro tempore of the Council of Ibero-American Businessmen (CEIB), Gerard Cadena, which include, among others, the promotion of trade and investment as “key elements for recovery”, the implementation of initiatives to attract foreign investment to the region, digital transformation, the promotion of entrepreneurship, the economic and social empowerment of women, the education and training of young people, the promotion and retention of talent, the fight against corruption, the defense of democracy, the commitment to sustainability and the promotion of renewable energies.
