The meeting paths at the EU-CELAC Summit

The geostrategic struggle between USA and Chinathe challenges of the climate crisis or food security are pressing aspects on which Latin America and the European Union they can approach positions in the EU-CELAC Summitwhich will be held next week in Brussels.

The Summit between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) will be the first of the Spanish presidency of the EU and a highly anticipated meeting after eight years without being held.

It is intended to lay the foundations for a new permanent dialogue between the two regions, although it could end with less progress than desired in terms of trade and cooperation; with the reluctance, moreover, of certain Latin American governments to address the implications of the war in Ukraine.

“There is an absolutely shared interest and that should take precedence as a systemic product of the relationship, and that is that all of us who are not China or the United States, are subjected to pressure from both and this includes both the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean but certainly also to Europe”explains Paulina Astroza, director of the Center for European Studies at the University of Concepción, in southern Chile.

Astroza insists that both European countries and countries in the Western Hemisphere have the opportunity to “create a strategic alliance” with will and a “clear conscience” of what is happening internationally and the swing of power towards Asia.

And within this context, one of the fundamental factors is the fight against the climate crisis. Intimately linked to energy independence and food security, Europe has made this one of its priorities and at a global level it cannot be understood without counting on the region that is home to the Amazon, the lungs of the world, and a large part of the planet’s natural resources.

“Thinking that in Latin America some countries, such as Chile itself, are among the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but since the vast majority of Latin American and Caribbean countries are not net pollutants , it is precisely China and the United States that are the largest”, notes Astroza.

“So there we would have a point in common, but every time we encounter these issues they also collide with certain interests in which Europeans also have to assume that, in part, there are European companies that when they come to invest and exploit resources in Latin America do not they have the same standard of compliance with basic rules to care for the environment and many of them do in Latin America what they do not do in Europe”, underlines.

Despite the tensions that the lack of consensus among Latin American countries to align themselves with the EU regarding the war in Ukraine may have caused, the effects of this are not alien to the region, affected by strong inflationary processes, while Europe seeks to increase its energy independence and needs to improve and diversify its portfolio of food imports and fossil resources.

To achieve their ecological objectives, but also to tackle energy needs, European countries “They need critical subjects like lithium or green hydrogen, and it turns out that they exist in Latin America”says the internationalist. “On the other hand, they also need food or are going to need food and in Latin America we are a subcontinent in which we have great wealth in that regard as well.”

Despite the obstacles between the two regions, such as the progress of trade agreements such as Mercosur, and the almost decade-long halt in this type of summit, both governments and experts hope that this meeting will serve to specify solutions to common concerns, the hand of a Spanish presidency of the European Council, which undoubtedly builds bridges between Latin America and Brussels.

Source: EFE