The EU’s dance with Latin America and the Caribbean

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This article was published 01/09/2023 (786 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE mood going into the July summit of European Union (EU) member states and the countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Brussels was mostly hopeful and upbeat.

After all, it had been eight long years since a similar gathering of leaders had been held.

As the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, breathlessly stated: “It’s a promising and optimistic page that is opening in relations between Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union.”

Unfortunately, the high hopes didn’t materialize.

It is instructive to note that European connections with the Americas go back centuries. European involvement, I’m afraid, was based largely on painful and life-altering colonial exploitation, slavery and Christianization.

It is worth recalling, though, that annual two-way trade between Europe and Latin America has grown significantly by almost 40 per cent in the last 10 years to roughly US$415 billion.

EU investments now exceed US$750 billion in the region and have increased by some 45 per cent since 2013. Moreover, the EU has negotiated bare-bones free trade deals with 27 of CELAC’s 33 member states.

For the Europeans, then, the task at hand was clear: to revitalize its partnership with the region in light of a rising China and a warring Russia. Secondly, the EU was hoping to gain access to precious resources in the Americas so as to diversify away from the Russian Federation and to lessen reliance on China (and concomitantly undermine Beijing’s growing footprint in the region).

Not unexpectedly, there was no consensus on a European apology for slavery and the legacy of colonialism — though there was an acknowledgment that a “crime against humanity “had been committed and that millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean had suffered badly — or on any serious plan to deal with financial reparations.

There was, however, some welcome language on environmentally sound and equitable use of critical resources from the region. But it was less than satisfactory to most and did not go nearly far enough.

As Argentine President Alberta Fernández intoned: “This idea that Latin America is only a producer of primary production and it seems that it has always been prevented from industrializing this primary production. And this is the first time that we can talk about extractivism without blame. Half-jokingly, half-seriously, it took five centuries, but we finally succeeded.”

Tellingly, there was also no agreement to condemn unequivocally Russia’s aggression against the Ukrainian people. Even a heavily watered down statement — which included a limp line about expressing “deep concern on the ongoing war against Ukraine” — could barely garner enough support.

Ralph Gonsalves, the current president of CELAC, did put matters in both historical and regional terms, though. “When you raise certain principles of non-interference in the internal affairs, the use of force and all the rest of it, they (CELAC members) will ignore you. Yet some of those same countries are the ones who are raising those very principles in Ukraine.”

On the commercial front, European leaders were banking on concluding a comprehensive EU-CELAC free trade pact. There was an expectation that any remaining differences would be ironed out and ratification secured, but that was not to be.

In fact, Brazil’s Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva sounded a rather discordant note. “The conclusion of the Mercosur-European Union Agreement is a priority and must be based on mutual trust, not threats,” he said pointedly.

Instead, da Silva suggested on the last day of the summit that a final deal could somehow be concluded in the next few months. That seems to be more wishful thinking than anything else. But we’ll see.

On the positive side, stronger commitments to combating the climate emergency were also included in the final summit statement. There were also some agreements (on energy and rare earth minerals) between the EU and individual countries in the region. But there was no blockbuster arrangement that encompassed all of the participating member states.

It may very well be that down the road an EU-CELAC alliance will bear fruit. But this recent summit was unable to re-energize the overall relationship and bring the three regional blocs closer together. Still, there is always the promise of another major gathering to be held in Colombia in 2025.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.