The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, have claimed this week the importance of the next EU-CELAC Summit to strengthen cooperation and the strategic relationship between the EU and Latin America.
“It has been eight years since we last met, eight years without meetings at the highest level between two regions to which everything calls, everything unites; too long without talking to each other politically at the highest level, when everything else continues intensely,” said Albares yesterday during the closing of the dialogue Perspectives and proposals for renewing the strategic partnership between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean, organized since Monday by the Carolina Foundation and the EU-LAC Foundation at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid.
The meeting brought together representatives of European, Latin American and Caribbean research centers and public institutions, as well as political authorities from both regions and observer institutions, in order to reflect, with a view to the Summit of Heads of State and Government of the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), on the revitalization of the strategic partnership between the two regions and exchange views on the impact of global challenges on the bi-regional political, economic, social and environmental agenda.
According to the minister, Latin America and the Caribbean receive more direct investment from the EU than from China, Russia, India and Japan combined. Therefore, he warned, these regions not only maintain an “indissoluble” link and are “called to be partners”, but what is at stake between them is not only investment and trade figures, but the possibility of sharing the same vision of the world and of maintaining parallel agendas.
Spain and the European Union, therefore, have a “shared interest” in preventing Latin America and the Caribbean from “drifting apart” and, in this sense, summits such as the EU-CELAC -which will bring together leaders from both sides of the Atlantic in Brussels on July 17 and 18 in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU- demonstrate the “will to revive” relations.
During the opening ceremony, held on Monday, Josep Borrell warned that “the EU must Europeanize its relationship with Latin America because, basically, today it is an Iberian relationship”. For this reason, he continued, the Spanish Presidency, which will begin on July 1, “can be a catalyst, a lever” so that the relationship between the two regions “is not only a relationship with the Iberian Peninsula”. The objective, he warned, should be “that when those six months are over, Europe looks more to Latin America”.
In any case, Borrell admitted that, although the two regions are “the parts of the world that have the most similar mental architectures”, the priorities are not exactly the same, especially in the current global context. “If I go now to a Baltic country and tell them that they have to look at Latin America when they have a war next door that consumes all their political, economic, military and diplomatic energies, they will tell me yes, but that they have another priority,” he declared.
He also warned that Latin America “is playing far below” its gigantic potential”, especially in matters such as “the capacity to produce food, natural, environmental and mineral resources” and, in this sense, “perhaps Europe” is not acting “as it should”, because “in the famous lithium triangle, there is not a single European company working”.
The event was also attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and pro tempore presidency of CELAC, Keisal Melissa Peters; María Fernanda Espinosa, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Ecuador; and the Secretary of State for Ibero-America, the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Juan Fernández Trigo.
