By Jorge Gil Angel |
Cartagena, Colombia (EFE) relationship of the European Union with Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Humanity is experiencing a civilizational crisis. It’s not just the climate crisis, the extinction crisis; it is also the financial and economic crisis because the system no longer gives for more. It is a crisis of values, of planetary security”, says Espinosa in an interview with EFE in Cartagena de Indias.
The former president of the United Nations General Assembly considers that there is “a rearrangement in power today.”
It is required that “Latin America and Europe define what space they want to have in this complex world, in this world full of challenges.”
This is because both regions are going through a difficult time, in the words of Espinosa, who believes that Latin America is experiencing a situation:
“Very harsh slowdown in economic growth, increase in poverty and inequality”, as well as “a crisis” of “democratic systems”.
“But also in Europe they are not having a very good time, you have to tell the truth. There is great pressure on the issue of its own energy transition due to the dependence on oil and gas from Russia, the rearrangements, the tensions between countries and even due to the different views and perspectives due to the war in Ukraine”, adds María Fernanda Espinosa.
Rebuild the common agenda
For Espinosa, this is the perfect moment to “relaunch bi-regional relations” between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We have had a pause, a lethargy, since the last Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union (Celac-EU Summit), which was in 2015 and there are many things that have happened, both in Latin America as in the European Union: good things and not so good things”, he says.
In this sense, the third Celac-EU Summit, between July 17 and 18 in Brussels, aims to try “to recognize each other, to rebuild a common agenda, to re-identify the priorities of both parties, to process disagreements and disagreements, that there are”.
“You have to understand that neither Latin America and the Caribbean nor the European Union are monolithic spaces, it is not a relationship between two equals. So it is a challenge, but it is an interesting challenge, necessary, to activate the political dialogue, to build a minimum agenda between both regions”, adds María Fernanda Espinosa, who was also Minister of Defense between 2012 and 2014.
Good time for integration: María Fernanda Espinosa
Despite the crises she mentioned, María Fernanda Espinosa believes that this is a good time for “Latin American integration.”
“There is a process to strengthen Celac. It is necessary to hope that Celac achieves an institutionalization in a more sustained, more permanent way, ”he says.
It also highlights the “relaunch” of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), “which has been an initiative” of the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentina, Alberto Fernández, something that is also “seen with great sympathy for Chile”.
“I think it is a good sign, to recover the legacy of Unasur because there was a long history and there are many things that are there, such as integration in infrastructure (…) cooperation in health,” adds Espinosa.
In this sense, he concludes that relaunching these integration mechanisms “with force” is key “despite the tensions, the challenges in the economies of Latin America and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic.”
The entry María Fernanda Espinosa: Humanity lives a civilizational crisis was first published in EFE Noticias.