“The mere holding of this summit is already a success,” says MEP Javi López (PSC), co-president of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly, at the end of the first working session of the EU and CELAC (America Latin America and the Caribbean) held this Monday in Brussels. Beyond the long-awaited family photo, the first taken by the leaders of both blocs since 2015, the event is an opportunity to “listen”, but also to “do pedagogy ”.
With the war in Ukraine, the EU has discovered that it is not guaranteed support from the Global South.
The distance operates in how problems are seen, it also happens to us with other conflicts. But I get the feeling that a lot of the distance we see towards the war has to do with a deep, quiet resentment of how the international order works for them and double standards. It is something to be heard and faced, but they must also hear that Russian aggression is an existential threat to the EU and that no injustice justifies another.
Does the risk of a bipolar world lead to closer collaboration between the EU and Celac?
One of the virtues of strengthening our relationship and moving from friendship to a strategic alliance is that it leads us to a less bipolar world. The potential clash between two superpowers such as the US and China is the world’s greatest risk in the medium and long term. Having strong ties between Latin America and Europe will strengthen our voices and avoid ending up in the periphery, which is where bipolarity leads us, to subaltern situations that we must avoid. And, I add: yes, we need a multipolar world, as Latin America asks for, but with rules and based on international law, not on the law of the jungle. The multipolar world, per se, is no better. If it’s not based on rules but on a few large regional players who claim to have zones of influence where they decide what happens in their neighborhood, that’s no better. That is why we Europeans say that we want a rules-based multipolar world, and that is what we believe is at stake in Ukraine.
The current presidency of Celac has asked that the summit not become “another useless battlefield” on the war in Ukraine. Will this meeting serve to better understand the European point of view, will there be a declaration condemning the war?
Being in contact forces you to negotiate and listen to the other party’s positions. That implies learning. What we have learned in these weeks is that the dialogue mechanisms were rusty. But you have to remember that what we’re trying to do is a huge job, not an easy one. Here what we have is a third of the UN countries negotiating a joint declaration unanimously on some of the great issues of the planet. It is normal that it is very complicated, because there is a right of veto and very different positions. But it is good to listen to each other and negotiate. Ukraine is not the central element of this summit, but at a summit like this you have to be able to bring the concerns of both sides and, for us, one of the main ones is Ukraine, which for us is an existential threat. But we have points in common with the vast majority of Latin American countries, because the vast majority have approved the UN declarations in defense of an order based on rules.
Latin American countries come with their own list of concerns, such as agreements on natural resources or the financing of climate change mitigation policies.
For Latin America, it is very important that in this new economic cycle some of the errors that they perceive to have occurred in the past are not repeated, such as trusting everything to raw materials. They don’t want it to end up replacing copper extraction with lithium extraction now. They are aware of this risk and it seems to me a very legitimate demand, because such situations should not be repeated. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, alluded to this in her speech when she said that we do not want to go and extract resources, that we want to contribute to the local development of everything related to raw materials, especially those considered like reviews. They want to play a fundamental role and you have to listen to them. Then there is a very strong debate on debt management, access to financing and the reform of multilateral financing mechanisms. It is something that was discussed at the last summit in Paris and then there is the proposal of the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, which is viewed with interest. It must be admitted that the COPS commitments on decarbonization have worked but the financing part has not. The headlines about big numbers have not come true. The only way to find money to finance climate change policies is to reform the international financial system to take these factors into account and this is a debate that is taking place, also within the IMF, and for them it is very relevant, just like for us it is Ukraine.
How is it explained? Some have complained of excessive Western attention to this war.
This is an existential threat to the EU, it is not just another third country war. Sometimes from the outside, from the Global South, it can be interpreted as an American issue rather than a European one and we have to make an effort to explain that it directly challenges us. We must do an exercise in pedagogy. The same with our green agenda, to explain that it does not have a protectionist spirit, that for us the most comfortable thing would be to do nothing and that in fact there are voices within Europe that say that it must be stopped because it slows down our competitiveness. From the outside it can be seen or read as a protectionist issue but it is not. And you have to talk to them about that.
The summit has begun with a bi-regional business forum. Is this great common investment agenda going to be filled with content?
In recent years there have been no bi-regional summits because it has not been one of the priorities of European foreign policy but in the last 10 years, trade between the EU and Latin America has grown by 39% and we are also the largest investor in the region . Our economic and human relationship, in short, is much greater than the political one and that is what should begin to be resolved with this summit. The Global Gateway investment agenda is about that, structuring and giving a narrative to our investment in the region and making it compatible with the major objectives.
Although there will be no trade negotiations at the summit, all eyes are on the possible agreement with Mercosur and the need for Brazil to make a move, but there is hardly any talk of the opposition in France or Austria.
After 20 years of negotiations, we reached an agreement and then several important voices said they did not share its content. Then we made modifications and the Brazilian counterpart logically says that it has to study it because it affects what was previously negotiated. Here time, work and political capital are needed on the part of everyone. Brazil wants to work on it and looks forward to the agreement but I don’t know if it’s a priority, that remains to be seen. Now we have taken important steps: the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU has set it as the objective of the semester (this summit would not take place without the political capital that Spain has invested) and then there are the efforts of von der Leyen going to the region. What is coming now are messages that Colombia, Argentina and others see it as strategically important. What is incomprehensible to me is that France, the same country that asks to reduce dependence on the United States, that advocates for Europe to be an autonomous actor, is then the one who is blocking this. There would be no better example of European strategic autonomy than the agreement with Mercosur.
Spanish companies are especially interested in something more accessible in principle, the renewal of the trade agreement with Mexico. Here we are also waiting for the Latin American counterpart to make a move…
I am confident that von der Leyen’s recent visit to Mexico and the meeting with President López Obrador will allow us to go the last mile that is missing, which has to do with the political will to unblock the issue and close that agreement. Mexico is a country of more than 200 million inhabitants, with a large presence of Spanish and European companies… They also have the will to let their economy fall solely on the United States. On Wednesday we have a working breakfast with the Mexican chancellor and we will talk about it. I trust that it will be resolved, I think that the decision simply has not yet come down from the president’s level.
