Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-008"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentleman, I should like to join the Minister in thanking Parliament for having included this European Union-Latin America and Caribbean Summit on the agenda for its plenary sitting. This will be the fifth top-level meeting between our regions since our strategic partnership was launched at the Rio Summit in 1999.
As regard the environment and climate change, we want to cooperate more with the region in order to meet this global challenge. On the initiative of the Commission, the first European Union-Latin America-Caribbean ministerial dialogue on the environment was opened in March 2008, as a prelude to the Lima Summit. We need to seize the opportunity that is open to us to ratify with our partners the existing relationship between sustainable development and climate change, even if many countries in Latin America still devote very little attention to the problems of climate change, in spite of its negative and sometimes disastrous impact on the region.
Finally, the European Union must emphasise the important role that it continues to play in promoting this regional integration and the positive effect of the integration on the economic and political stability of the sub-regions.
That is the information that I have for Parliament and I shall obviously be very interested in the speeches that follow.
The Lima Summit will place particular emphasis on two specific topics: firstly, the fight against poverty, inequality and exclusion, and secondly, climate change and energy. The Summit is taking place in a very stimulating climate.
The Latin America-Caribbean region is changing very fast. For the first time, the gross domestic product of the region has increased by an average of 5% over the past five years. Hence public budgets have increased and that is enabling the region to address the risks of social equality, which are still significant. It must not be forgotten that over 200 million people still live in poverty there. The region is also becoming increasingly important internationally as a producer of agricultural products and biofuels.
These developments are part of a political context divided between democracy, which is still the most common system in the region, and a growing trend towards populism, indeed, in some cases, the strengthening of executive power at the expense of parliamentary government and the primacy of law.
As you know, Europe is involved at very many levels. With the region, it has committed itself to resolving those structural problems. Europe is still the main donor for development cooperation, the biggest foreign employer. As the second trading partner for the region, Europe leads the field in investment, which is considerably higher than investment by China. Our general association agreements with Chile and Mexico have had a significant impact on the growth in our trade since they were first introduced. We are now at the third stage of the negotiations for the signature of association agreements with the Andean Community and Central America, which there is every indication will happen in the near future. We are working on promoting and supporting regional integration, sharing the positive experience of Europe in that respect.
Similarly, we are currently negotiating with Mercosur on the possibilities for getting things moving again in the present situation. We have recently signed a strategic partnership with Brazil, which should lead to the initiation of a first joint action plan by the end of this year. The Caribbean region is the first, and so far the only one, to have successfully negotiated an economic partnership agreement with the Union under the Cotonou Agreement.
We are, of course, continuing to support democracy and human rights throughout the region, both through cooperation programmes and also, where necessary and only when requested, through election observation missions.
Finally, I shall outline the priorities for the Summit and the immediate future. Social cohesion and regional integration, in view of their importance for economic and political stability, and multilateralism, since the values of the two regions are very similar, must remain the political priorities for the European Union-Latin America-Caribbean partnership. The main objective of the European Union for the Lima Summit is to consolidate the existing strategic partnership and move it forward in two areas, social cohesion and sustainable development, which will be of crucial importance to our relationship with the region in the immediate future.
As regards social cohesion, the European Commission has been implementing major aid and cooperation programmes to reduce poverty in the region. Forty per cent of the EUR 2.6 billion cooperation and development allocation for the next six years is being used to resolve social cohesion problems."@en1
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