COMMUNICATION

The acting director general of External Action of the Regional Government of Extremadura and president of Yuste Foundation’s Executive Committee, Rosa Balas, opened the course “EU-Latin America and the Caribbean Relations in the Framework of the Presidencies of the Council of the U.E and the EU-CELAC and Iberoamerican Summits”, to be held until Thursday at the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste. (27/06/2023)

During her speech, Balas pointed out that this course has become one of the fundamental pillars of Yuste Foundation because it represents its European and Ibero-American spirit. In this regard, she added that this year coincides with Spain’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, a fact that has favoured the holding of the regional summit between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in July in Brussels, which has not taken place since 2015.

At the opening, the president of the Executive Committee explained that Extremadura is a European region with a strong American link, “a differential fact that our autonomy statute reflects as it indicates that our region is European, American and cross-border and it marks our road map, which is our relationship with Europe and Latin America”.

Rosa Balas affirmed that the New Agenda for relations between the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean adopted a few days ago established the cooperation policies. “In Extremadura we have one of the most important lithium deposits in Europe, but this is not what’s important, it is the extraction, the transformation, the creation of quality workers, and innovation and technology applied to this process allowing development”. According to Balas, this is a large workspace with Latin America as a whole.

In the opinion of the acting director general, trade relations are fundamental for growth and she expressed her desire for MERCOSUR to be signed as soon as possible. Thus, she pointed out that now more than ever it is necessary for both regions to work firmly in this sense, because “the geopolitical context not only obliges us, but is making an appeal to these two regions of the world that have more in common”.

In turn, the president of the EU-LAC Foundation, Leire Pajín, explained that this year they have worked so that “Europe finds the right instruments of cooperation to respond to the great challenges we have in common, because we live in a complex and multipolar world and it is therefore more important than ever to weave strategic alliances such as the European and Latin American and Caribbean one”.

During his speech, the director of the EU-LAC Foundation and co-director of the course, Adrián Bonilla, explained that the objective of these sessions is to evaluate what the expectations of the relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean are now that Spain assumes the presidency of the European Council. “Empirically, it can be demonstrated that the relations between the two regions in Spain, especially since the constitution of the European Union, have been one of the main meeting hinges between the two regions”. In fact, the Spanish presidency has been particularly important for the reissue of the summit of heads of state that has not been held since 2015. “The scenarios are different because the institutional forms of distribution of political, economic and military capabilities have changed globally and we, furthermore, currently find ourselves in these times of conflict ¾not only the military conflict in Ukraine¾ which account for an obvious transformation of the international order built after World War II”, he concluded.

For three days, international experts and institutional and academic leaders will discuss and analyse the current context in this course, which is directed by the executive director of the EU-LAC Foundation, Adrian Bonilla; the president of Euroamérica Foundation and academician of Yuste, Ramón Jáuregui, and the member of Yuste Foundation’s Board of Trustees, María Salvadora Ortiz.

In addition to the students who have attended in person, one hundred and fifty-five people from Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Morocco, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland and Portugal have enrolled online.

You can follow the course live via the following link: https://www.youtube.com/@fundacionyuste/featured