In the margins of the CELAC Summit in Buenos Aires on Tuesday 24 January, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, announced that the next summit between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC) countries will take place on Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 July in Brussels.
Speaking at the summit, Mr Michel welcomed the fact that Brazil, now presided over by Lula da Silva, had returned to the CELAC table. In a bilateral meeting with the Brazilian president, Mr Michel spoke of the possibility of a bilateral EU/Brazil summit and called for this new political momentum to finalise the EU/Mercosur trade agreement, according to Mr Michel’s spokesman Barend Leyts.
In front of the CELAC countries, the former Belgian Prime Minister underlined the elements that bring Europeans, Latin Americans and Caribbean people closer together: respect for the Rule of law, the defence of multilateralism to meet global challenges, etc. “Most of us have condemned Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine”, which threatens the international order and undermines the principle that every country has the right to decide its own future, he stressed.
In the area of investment, Mr Michel called for the strengthening of trade relations between the two regions, in line with environmental, labour and societal standards. In particular, he called for the strengthening of “value chains” between Latin America and the EU, for example to build electric cars with Bolivian lithium and to use Latin American hydraulic resources to produce “green hydrogen”.
The European External Action Service will unveil its proposals for a new agenda in EU-Latin America relations in early May.
In their Declaration of Buenos Aires, the CELAC countries welcome the roadmap established by the foreign ministers of the partner countries in the autumn of 2022 in order to enrich exchanges and contribute to the next EU/CELAC summit (see EUROPE 13053/16).
See the declaration of the CELAC countries (in Spanish): https://aeur.eu/f/52q (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)