The Diplomat
The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will inaugurate today in the Senate the fifteenth plenary session of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat), which was initially going to be inaugurated by the acting Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.
As reported yesterday by the European Parliament office in Madrid, the inaugural session will take place in the hemicycle of the Spanish Senate and will begin at 11:15 with the opening speech of the Minister of José Manuel Albares. The event will also include speeches by the acting president of the Senate, Ander Gil; the acting president of the Congress of Deputies, Meritxell Batet; and the co-presidents of EuroLat, MEP Javi López (S&D, Spain), and Colombian congressman Óscar Darío Pérez. Afterwards, a press conference will be held in the Salón de los Pasos Perdidos (Hall of the Lost Steps) of the Senate with speeches by Javi López and Óscar Darío Pérez.
In addition, the closing of the session will take place tomorrow, Thursday, at 13:30, with speeches by Ander Gil, Javi López and Amado Cerrud, who will be elected during this Assembly as President of the Latin American component of the EuroLat Assembly. In the initial agenda, which remained unchanged until this past Sunday, the day of the early general elections, the opening speech was given by Pedro Sánchez (although “pending confirmation”) and the closing speech was to be given by José Manuel Albares.
The Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat) is the parliamentary institution of the Bi-regional Strategic Partnership of the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean and meets in plenary session once a year. The last plenary meeting took place in April 2022 in Buenos Aires. In the course of the Assembly, the 150 members of EuroLat – 75 MEPs and 75 representatives of Latin American and Caribbean parliaments, including Parlatino (Latin American Parliament), Parlandino (Andean Parliament), Parlacen (Central American Parliament), the Parlasur (Mercosur Parliament) and the joint parliamentary committees of Chile and Mexico-will also have the opportunity to evaluate the results and conclusions of the third Summit of leaders of the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), held just a week ago in Brussels and the first since 2015.
Agenda of activities
The activities of the Assembly began this past Monday with an audience at the Palace of El Pardo by King Felipe VI. Yesterday, the committees on Political Affairs, Security and Human Rights (which called for cooperation between the EU and Latin America in the fight against drug trafficking and in the regulation of Artificial Intelligence and other technologies) and Economic, Financial and Trade Affairs (which called for strengthening gender equality and the role of women in trade relations between the two regions in order to alleviate social imbalances in Latin America and the Caribbean and approved the report Parliamentary scrutiny of trade negotiations and the evaluation and monitoring of free trade agreements).
The Committees on Sustainable Development, Environment, Energy Policy, Research, Innovation and Technology; and Social Affairs, Youth and Children, Human Exchanges, Education and Culture also met, as well as the Euro-Latin American Women’s Forum and the Working Group on Security, Organized and Transnational Crime and Terrorism.
Today will include, in addition to the opening ceremony, the meeting of the Working Group on Food Security and the meetings of the EuroLat Co-Vice Presidents with the European Economic and Social Committee and representatives of Latin American Civil Society, and will conclude with a dinner hosted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the headquarters of Casa de America.
On Thursday, the plenary session of the EuroLat Assembly will take place, in which reports and recommendations previously prepared yesterday, Tuesday, by the different commissions and working groups that make up EuroLat will be debated and voted on. Among some of the topics are the fight against hate speech, the regulation of digital platforms, the challenges of COVID-19 in education and health, access to water, the fight against organized crime, trade negotiations and the universal declaration of the rights of nature.
