Brussels, 30/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - This Tuesday the European Commission will adopt a Communication specifying the actions it intends to undertake to ensure the follow-up to the EU/Latin America/Caribbean summit that took place in June 1999 in Rio de Janeiro.
Without proposing a truly new EU/Latin America strategy, the Communication sets out three main priorities among the fifty-odd suggestions formulated one and a half years ago by the Heads of State: a) human rights, b) cooperation in the sector of information society, c) the fight against social inequalities. These priorities will be developed at the same time as the cooperation programmes that already exist at a regional level with the Mercosur, the Andean Community, Central America and the Caribbean.
The aim is to achieve true progress in these three sectors before the next summit that will take place in Madrid in 2002. The progress achieved until now in the implementation of the aims set at Rio have been slow, for lack of, it seems, effective coordination between the summit participants. In November 1999, the European and Latin American high level civil servants had defined twelve priorities, ranging from the reinforcing of cooperation in international forums (notably the WTO) to the promotion of commercial and university exchanges, via the fight against drug trafficking (see EUROPE of 11 November 1999).
The idea of the Communication presented this Tuesday to the college of Commissioner is to concentrate cooperation on a few fields of actions that can be managed in the framework of its present financial and administrative capabilities. No additional budget is in fact foreseen to ensure the implementation of the aims. The EU's multi-annual "financial perspectives" foresee a budget of EUR 2.1 billion over the 2000-2006 period for Latin America, and the Commission proposed to allocate EUR 305 million in 2001 and EUR 306 million in 2002.