With barely hours to go before the third EU-Latin America summit, the Eurobarometer confirms that EU citizens mostly support the green transition. 85% think that the Union should invest more in renewable energies. In 2019, President Von der Leyen made the energy transition a priority in her mandate, at the head of the European Commission, in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the replacement of fossil fuels by alternative sources of energy is already a matter of security for Europeans.
Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the regions of the world that is suffering the most from the effects of climate change, concentrates 56% of the world’s lithium resources in the triangle formed by Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and it is estimated that it can produce a 12% of the renewable hydrogen that will be required in 2050. It also stands out for its production of wind and solar energy, which in some countries has a decisive weight in the so-called energy mix and is a world leader in the availability of fresh water and forest mass Finally, the OECD estimates that the green transition could generate a 10.5% increase in employment in Latin American countries by 2030.
For all this, the green transition is one of the topics to be addressed on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels by the heads of state and government of Europe and CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Many are the expectations placed on this meeting which, in an incomprehensible way, has been made to wait eight years.
The aim of this summit is to promote bi-regional cooperation and, for this reason, an agenda has been designed that is structured around the three necessary transitions: the green, the digital and the just transition. All three, intimately linked to each other: an equilateral triangle that demands equal attention on each side.
In the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) we have been prominent actors in cooperation between the EU and Latin America for years, even during this long period in which political dialogue at the highest level has not taken place. The continuity of cooperation during this time is just a sign of the natural vitality of bi-regional relations, which is also manifested in the social, cultural, business, etc. spheres. However, we also appreciate how the EU’s interest in Latin America has been declining lately, and that the region has less and less weight in the priorities and budgets of the European institutions.
Coinciding with my arrival at the general secretariat of the OEI, Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, then president of the Royal Elcano Institute, published a report with the suggestive title Is Latin America part of the West? His conclusion is that the West walks on three legs: the old Europe and the two Americas, the North and the South. We must hope that our political representatives recognize that there is more that unites us than what separates us, as millions of Europeans and Americans do every day. And that what unites us is what really matters: a culture, shared values ??and a possibility of global leadership. Even more so in a geopolitical scenario as unstable and dangerous as the current one, which has shown the great risk involved in alliances and dependencies with those who are governed by principles different from ours.
Although we know that the discrepancies will have a notable dose of prominence this week in Brussels, we hope that this will not be an obstacle to reaching agreements that will allow us to design a new cooperation agenda for the coming years and recover the lost momentum that it has only benefited other countries, such as the United States and China, who see our region as a competitive arena for their extractive and commercial interests.
The OEI has developed important bi-regional cooperation projects in scientific matters, such as researcher networks with Forcyt and, more recently, Horitzó Europa in matters of bi-regional energy transition. With this he brings his experience as the most important organization of Ibero-American cooperation, which allows us to affirm that this is an area of ??extraordinary opportunity for the EU and Latin America: Europe has technology and science and Latin America an emerging research community and huge resources that will make these technologies work and can provide our citizens, on both sides of the Atlantic, with clean and affordable energy. In short: win-win for both.
Our worst enemies are cooperative rhetoric repeated to the point of satiety in redundant declarations empty of commitments, as well as outdated models of North-South cooperation.
We are countries in transition with a vocation to compete globally in the three transitions proposed at this summit: green, digital and fair. It will not be another lost opportunity if, at least, we end up with a regular and joint work agenda for the future, without having to wait another eight years until the next summit.
