![]() ![]() Honduran President Xiomara Castro also defended a multipolar world in a speech at the event, calling for “exchange and cooperation for development.”įrench President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that for him, the most important discussion at the summit was a side meeting on Venezuela’s political crisis that included Borrell, Macron, Lula, Argentine President Alberto Fernández, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and envoys representing both Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro government and its opposition. charter, on the principles of sovereignty,” European Council President Charles Michel tweeted on Tuesday. “We want a multipolar world based on law and on the U.N. José Antonio Sanahuja, who directs a Spanish government foundation for public policy research and is another Borrel advisor, wrote this week in Le Grand Continent that close ties between Europe and Latin America in the 1970s “allowed for widening the margins of autonomy of both regions amid the bipolarity of that time.” Today’s outreach seeks the same. One hope, she added, is that Latin American countries will join EU efforts to preserve an open international economic and political system rather than allowing the world to become divided into Chinese- and U.S.-led blocs. The EU hopes to offer investments that have transparent contracts, meet high environmental and labor standards, and include technology transfers to Latin American countries, Pinzón told Foreign Policy. In Brussels, the EU announced that it aims to invest more than $50 billion in projects in Latin America by 2027 through its “ Global Gateway” program-an effort that Erika Rodríguez Pinzón, a professor of the sociology of international relations at Complutense University of Madrid and a special advisor to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, described as “a European version of Belt and Road Initiative, with important differences.” Sánchez, for his part, may no longer be Spain’s prime minister after a snap election this weekend.īut European officials didn’t let these strains get in the way of making tangible overtures to CELAC countries. And though Lula’s 2022 election raised hopes that a long-pending draft trade agreement between the EU and South American customs union Mercosur would finally be signed, it has been imperiled by new objections from both Europe and Brazil. Still, it was clear that there would be some substantial points of tension between the two sides at the summit.Įuropean leaders have pushed their Latin American counterparts to vocally condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine while most have done so in United Nations General Assembly votes, they have not joined the Western sanctions campaign. The time, they said, seemed right to join forces. Several progressive leaders keen to strengthen ties have also been voted into office, such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who took up the rotating presidency of the EU on July 1.Įuropean foreign-policy thinkers saw Latin America as a region that was mostly democratic, worried about getting short shrift in a bipolar world order, and rich with raw materials needed for the green energy transition-as well as oil and gas necessary for the pivot away from Russian fossil fuels. The EU and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held their last summit in 2015 soon after, Latin America became paralyzed by internal divisions while Europe prioritized managing debt and migration crises as well as Brexit.īut in recent years, both regions have grown increasingly concerned about being sidelined by the emerging economic cold war between the United States and China. Ahead of a summit between European Union and Latin American officials in Brussels this week, European officials hyped the event as a “relaunch” of a loose partnership that dates back decades but had withered since the mid-2010s. ![]()
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