EU seeks to strengthen dialogue with Latin America

The European Union intends to strengthen the political dialogue with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) for a new era, with more regular summits at the level of ministers and leaders within the framework of closer and more modern relations.

This is the goal set by the European bloc in the agenda presented this Wednesday by the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, for closer contact between Europe and Latin America, which arrives at the gates of the leaders’ summit in Brussels next July, the first event of its kind since 2015.

“The relationship has been taken for granted and has even been neglected after years without a summit. In the geopolitical context, strengthening the relationship between the EU and Latin America is a strategic imperative,” Borrell explained at a press conference from Brussels, where He has defended taking the relationship to the level of preferred partners.

The head of European diplomacy has stressed that this is “key” to the relationship between the two regions, with the summit between the EU and CELAC under the Spanish presidency of the Council that “marks a reunion” between the two regions after the “long period of 8 year without peak”.

In the community capital, they consider it a priority to strengthen the dialogue with a region that they consider close in political terms and to which they have an important economic relationship. Despite this, political exchanges are not as regular as they are with other regions and blocs, so one of the main goals on the agenda is to launch a permanent coordination mechanism with which to maintain more regular contacts.

The idea is to have a high-level dialogue between officials to evaluate the political relationship once or twice a year. In Brussels, they consider that this structure will be key to dealing with emergencies such as the one that occurred with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at a time when the EU considers it essential to attract more countries to condemn and apply sanctions against Russia.

Through this mechanism, the EU wants to prepare more meetings at the ministerial level, the idea is to have more regular Foreign Affairs meetings, which can pave more regular summit level appointments. After years without a summit, in the European capital they want the date and place for the next meeting of European and Latin American leaders to emerge from this meeting.

Commercial aspects in the focus of the European Union

One of the legs of the strategy is to strengthen commercial aspects between two regions that jointly represent 14 % of the world population and 21 % of world GDP. In this sense, the EU aims to sign and ratify the trade agreements with Chile, finalize the one in progress with Mexico and conclude an agreement on the agreement with Mercosur, pending an annex on environmental issues.

The EU points out that the agreements with Central America, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador will also have to be strengthened in terms of sustainability and aspires to reinforce and join forces in the World Trade Organization, in addition to intensifying global efforts to diversify the sources of raw materials and strengthen global supply chains.

For this objective, the European strategy recognizes that greater cooperation from both regions will be needed and points to the global infrastructure investment project, Gateway Global, to promote trade, investment, and the construction of more sustainable and interconnected societies.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Siavosh Hosseini, Unsplash)

Visit our news channel on Google News and follow us to get accurate, interesting information and stay up to date with everything. You can also see our daily content on Twitter and Instagram