The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, announced yesterday in Asunción that Spain will send next week two tons of medical material to Paraguay to help in the fight against COVID-19.
“Spanish solidarity is going to translate, next week, into the arrival of a shipment of medical supplies, especially intubation material, which will help alleviate the bottleneck that exists at the moment for the treatment of the sick, especially those in intensive care,” said the minister during a press conference with her Paraguayan counterpart, Euclides Acevedo. To date, the pandemic has caused the death of 7,000 people in Paraguay.
The Minister made these statements during her official visit to Paraguay, where she arrived from Brazil. In the Paraguayan capital, González Laya was received by the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo, with whom she discussed the main issues of bilateral relations and the regional and multilateral agenda, and later met with Acevedo, with whom she celebrated the VII Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination of Bilateral Policy between Spain and Paraguay -one of the main instruments of political relations between the two countries- and discussed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, regional issues and cooperation between Spain and Paraguay on sensitive issues, such as the fight against trafficking in persons, especially women, and health.
The two foreign ministers also discussed the status of the EU-Mercosur agreement, which was signed two years ago and whose ratification has been stalled since then due to the positions of France, Germany and other European countries, which consider that the agreement does not have sufficient guarantees to protect the environment and prevent deforestation in the Amazon. On this issue, González Laya insisted on the need to introduce adjustments in the environmental part and warned, as he had done the day before in Brazil, that “improvements must be made on the issue of deforestation”. However, she also assured that she had received a “positive” response from the Mercosur countries on this issue and that he will take this message to the European Commission to try to speed up the process of ratification of the agreement.
For his part, the Paraguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs took advantage of his intervention in the press conference to “thank Spain for its sense of solidarity” and stressed that González Laya had conveyed to him “the commitment to sponsor the long-awaited signing of the agreement with the European Union”. According to the Paraguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spain is Paraguay’s second largest cooperating country and the third largest in terms of direct foreign investment.
After this meeting, González Laya held a meeting with the Minister for Children and Adolescents, Teresa Martínez, visited the Juan de Salazar Cultural Center of the Spanish Embassy in Paraguay and held a meeting with Spanish NGOs.
