A flood of investments grouped under the umbrella of the Global Gateway (45,000 million euros to which will be added national contributions and international organizations), the promise that European companies will share knowledge and not only extract natural resources, as well as the signature of energy cooperation agreements with Argentina, Chile or Uruguay, yesterday in Brussels gave the start to the summit of leaders of the European Union and the Community of States of Latin America and the Caribbean (Celiac).
After an eight-year hiatus, the current complex geopolitical context pushes the two sides to cooperate and move from being “natural partners to partners of choice”, but the Latin American representatives marked the ground from the first moment. “We do not want to be seen as a region for the extraction of raw materials, but as a partner in search of solutions, partners and not simply suppliers”, declared the president of CAF, the development bank of Latin America, Sergio Díaz – Grenades “It is not acceptable that we are just a sapling of natural resources, condemned to extractivism and the provision of cheap food and low-skilled labor”, added the Mexican Chancellor, Alicia Bárcena, during the business forum prior to the summit
The energy crisis, added to factors such as the rise of the conflict between the United States and China or the need to add allies to the European vision of the war in Ukraine have led the EU to look to the south of the American continent . “Latin America and the Caribbean have the potential to become a global powerhouse of renewable energies”, highlighted the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Thanks to European investments, “the natural step would be to move to clean hydrogen”, he added, pointing to the possibility of exporting resources to Europe and the abundance of critical raw materials for the green transition, but showing understanding towards Latin American concerns and marking distances with other actors. “Europe wants to be your partner of choice [in the critical raw materials sector]”, but “unlike other foreign investors it is not only interested in investing in pure resource extraction. We want to partner with you to create local capabilities to process them, and manufacture batteries and finished products, now electric vehicles,” he assured.
“This summit will give new life to our bond”, assured Charles Michel, president of the European Council, at the summit’s opening session. The meeting “will mark a before and an after” in the biregional relationship, assured the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, who took the opportunity to claim the potential of the EU and Latin America to defend multilateralism and the principles of the UN .
The cautious speeches of European leaders – filled with quotes from great Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges (“Unlike love, friendship is not something that requires frequency and this summit proves it”, said Michel) – find as an answer abundant warnings against the temptation to see the south again as a simple seedling of resources or to turn the summit into a debate about the war in Ukraine.
“EU countries may have an understandable concern about the situation in Ukraine, but this summit must not become another pointless battleground for speeches on this issue, which has been and is being addressed in other forums. relevant”, warned the acting president of CELAC, Ralph Gonsalves, president of the Grenadines and San Vicente, who drew attention to other conflicts that do not receive the same attention, such as Haiti, Palestine or parts of Africa.
The rejection of a bipolar world is also another factor that pushes the EU and CELAC to cooperate. “We cannot submit to a new bipolarity (…), together we can present an alternative to the other world actors”, said the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández. The Brazilian president joined in his proclamations against a bipolar world (“Dividing the world into antagonistic blocs would be madness”, he said), but clearly distanced himself from some European policies. “Using sanctions and blockades without the support of international law is something that only serves to penalize the most vulnerable parts of the population.”
The jug of cold water that resulted from CELAC’s response to the EU’s proposal to include a condemnation of the war in Ukraine in the final declaration of the summit – still subject to negotiations – was the final confirmation for to many European leaders of the extent to which the relationship with countries in the so-called Global South has been neglected. “The lesson is that we Europeans have been quite arrogant,” admitted the Acting Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte.
