Blog: EU-CELAC Summit: Developing new type of cooperation with Latin America and Caribbean - Hoofdinhoud

Sustainable solutions for new challenges

Spanish translation

This week the EU-CELAC Heads of State and Government Summit took place in Brussels under the motto "Shaping our common future: working for prosperous, cohesive and sustainable societies for our citizens". In parallel I had the pleasure of co-hosting the EU-CELAC Business Summit themed "Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean: Promoting inclusive and sustainable growth by enhancing the role of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises".

EU and CELAC countries together have over 1 billion people, include 61 countries and represent 25 % of global GDP. The EU’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Latin American and Caribbean region represents about 34 % of all FDI, which is more than the EU’s investment in Russia, India and China combined.

This week's summit demonstrated that EU is not only keen to keep this excellent relationship with Latin America and Caribbean, but that it wants to upgrade it to another level. European Commission committed €230 million to support the efforts towards sustainable development of Latin America and the Caribbean, €118 million for investment and business support, and €346 million in regional funding program for the Caribbean region. Together that is almost €700 million in support of Latin America and the Caribbean. The total EU funding for cooperation with Latin America and Caribbean for the period 2014-2020 is around € 3.5 billion.

However, I often like to say that not everything lies in quantity of aid funding, but also in quality. I am proud to say that our development cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries has been very successful. Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced very positive growth over the last decade and did remarkable job in lifting people out of poverty. Challenges currently ahead of them are of different nature. In line with that, our new cooperation focuses on sustainability and partnership. In this respect, it is important to mention the significance of Business Summit, and the role of private sector in development and cooperation.

Finally, we have set up a new international cooperation facility by which the EU and the countries of CELAC region, which are 'graduated' to middle income countries, will jointly help those countries, which are still in need for further cooperation.

The EU-CELAC summit further reinforced great cooperation between the two continents, cooperation which benefits both sides of the Atlantic. EU is committed to support Latin America and Caribbean on their road to sustainability. And we intend to tackle global challenges together.