On Sunday, November 9, Santa Marta will become the epicenter of political dialogue between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. The city will host the Fourth Summit between the European Union (EU) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a meeting that seeks to give new impetus to a bi-regional relationship that has undergone decades of rapprochement, agreements, and reconfigurations on the international stage.
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This will not be just another meeting. All 27 member states of the European Union and the 33 countries that make up CELAC are expected to participate, at a time marked by the crisis of multilateralism and the challenge of redefining a common agenda on issues such as climate change, migration, international trade, and the defense of democracy. But before we get to the summit, it is worth reviewing the background of this bi-regional relationship.
Long before the European Union was established as a supranational organization in 1993, relations between the parties had already been established since the 1950s, when the first bilateral contacts between nations in the two regions took place. The ‘Carta de Buenos Aires’ (1970) promoted the establishment of official contacts, leading to the Brussels Dialogue in 1971, a meeting that brought together the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) and representatives of the European Community, which mainly resulted in trade agreements with countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Mexico.
From the 1980s onwards, Europe began to take a greater interest in the social and political aspects of Latin America. A crucial milestone was the start of the San José Process in 1984, a dialogue involving high-level political mediation and committing the Community as a whole to the promotion of peace and reconstruction in Central America.
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Between 1990 and 1994, political relations deepened and a new framework for dialogue was institutionalized with the First Institutionalized Ministerial Meeting between the European Economic Community and the Rio Group, held in Luxembourg in April 1991, according to the CELAC archives. There, the importance of strengthening democracy, human rights, and regional integration in Latin America was highlighted, while a commitment was made to cooperate in solving the problems of foreign debt, trade, and the fight against drug trafficking.
These ministerial meetings, without the participation of heads of State and without including the entire Caribbean, were held on ten additional occasions, although in practice they operated more as a mechanism for political agreement.
During this period, key commitments were also reached, such as the EU-Mercosur Interregional Cooperation Framework Agreement, signed in December 1995, as well as cooperation agreements with Chile (1996) and Mexico (1997). This cycle culminated with Mexico becoming the first Latin American country to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union in March 2000.
From Rio to Santa Marta
Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir, Deputy Minister of Multilateral Affairs of Colombia. Foto:CESAR MELGAREJO / CEET
Now, major summits between Europe and Latin America are not recents. Their origins date back to 1999, in Rio de Janeiro, when the first meeting of heads of state and government between the two blocs was held, at that time called the EU-LAC Summit. That meeting marked the beginning of what was then called a “bi-regional strategic partnership,” driven by the optimism of the 90s and the expansion of democracy and the free market in Latin America.
Since then, the meetings have been a barometer of the political and economic priorities of the moment. In Lima (2008), for example, the focus was on trade and cooperation for development.
In 2013, two years after the creation of CELAC—which replaced the Rio Group as the unified political voice of Latin America and the Caribbean—, bi-regional dialogue took on a new form: the EU-CELAC Summit. The first summit was held in Santiago, Chile, and marked the beginning of a more structured and representative phase in relations between the two regions. Unlike the previous format, CELAC allowed Latin America and the Caribbean to present themselves to the European Union with a common position and a shared agenda.
However, the best structure did not always translate into concrete agreements. For almost a decade, the dialogue cooled. Internal crises in the EU—the euro crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic—and political upheavals in Latin America relegated the relationship to the background.
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“We can talk about three major periods,” says internationalist Manuel Camilo González. “The first, in the 90s, was a period of discovery of markets, particularly from Europe to Latin America, based on the idea of free market reforms, which had a significant impact on the summits in Rio de Janeiro and Lima,” he says.
He adds: “Then there is a period of near oblivion that extends from 2000 to around 2022, after the pandemic, when Latin America experiences another economic setback, as does the EU with the euro crisis and particularly with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”
González adds that, although since 2017 the European Union has begun to talk about open strategic autonomy, which seeks to “reduce dependencies through interdependence,” and one of those focuses is Latin America, the relationship is only now beginning to recover. “This whole movement toward the idea of restoring the relationship would be the third period, and the opportunity with this summit with CELAC,” he says.
In this regard, for the Deputy Minister of Multilateral Affairs, Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir, the event in Santa Marta is of vital importance. “It is the second most important summit that the country has hosted in its entire history, comparable only to that of the Non-Aligned Countries in 1995, in Cartagena,” he says.
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The Santa Marta meeting comes at a time of global realignment. The aforementioned war in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East with Gaza, and the rivalry between the United States and China—which, however, seems to be moving toward dialogue—have forced Europe to rethink its alliances. For Latin America, the situation is also unprecedented: several countries in the region are seeking to diversify their international relations amid a wave of progressive governments and tensions with Washington.
In this context, Professor Angélica Rodríguez of the National University believes that the summit represents a “golden opportunity” to redefine the role of the bi-regional relationship and return to the essence of the project. “Due to the tensions that various CELAC countries have with the United States, this summit can serve to deepen cooperation and focus on strategic issues that give the region greater room for maneuver on the international stage,” he says.
Camilo A. Castillo – International Subeditor
Juan Pablo Penagos – Political journalist
@eltiempo
