The European Union is considering extending an invitation to the Ukrainian President, Volodímir Zelenski, to participate in the next Summit of the Twenty-seven with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, which will take place on July 17 and 18 in Brussels.
“The decision will be made in the coming days,” say European diplomatic sources, who stress that beforehand it is necessary to “carefully assess” the possible risks, as a reaction of rejection by countries that do not share the Western vision of the war. On the occasion of the visit of the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, to Kyiv on behalf of the Council of the EU, the Ukrainian leader expressed his desire to intervene in some way at the summit to defend his formula for peace. The Spanish presidency of the Council supports these aspirations, but the final decision is in the hands of the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, host of the event, who, although he is not opposed to the idea, must first evaluate its pros and cons.
On the American side, the person in charge of issuing the invitations is Celac, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. A high number of leaders from this group of countries have already confirmed their attendance at the summit, diplomatic sources affirm, but not Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, who continues to defoliate the daisy. In Brussels it is suspected that it is very likely that he will not announce his decision until a few days before the appointment, although the expectation according to different sources is that he will finally participate in the meeting.
As for Venezuela, the plan is for Celac to invite not President Nicolás Maduro, which could have created problems with other participating countries, but rather its vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who already represented it at the last Ibero-American Summit (leaving out the Caribbean country would also have caused friction with other partners). The holding of the EU-Celac summit, the first in eight years, is one of the great commitments of the Spanish presidency, which aspires to expand the areas of cooperation with the region.
A declaration will come out of the summit that will reiterate the strategic nature of the relationship between the two blocs, will launch a broad agenda of public and private investment and will lay the foundations to give this relationship a more structural nature through the creation of a coordination cell or permanent secretariat. As a sign of the desire to further integrate the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States into the political action of the EU, the Spanish Presidency of the Council has invited the Ministers of Economy of these countries to participate in the informal Ecofin meeting that will take place in Santiago de Compostela in mid-September.
