On the heels of yet-again stalled talks about a trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur block of South American countries, a new report released today by the Club de Madrid and the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center and Europe Center sets out key opportunities to deepen cooperation across critical shared interests, including democracy and rule of law, the green transition, and digital transformation.
Authored by Ignacia Ulloa Peters, Diego Area, and Felipe Félix Méndez, the report—“Galvanising Spain’s Presidency for the Next Chapter: Multilateralism, Green Transition, and Digital Transformation”—highlights recommendations for advancing shared priorities on a global scale. The report features a foreword from former President of Slovenia and Member of Club de Madrid Danilo Türk and former President of Costa Rica and Vice President of Club de Madrid Laura Chinchilla.
“With promising advances achieved during the EU-CELAC Summit and the Summit of the Americas, among other successful engagements, EU-US-LAC relations could benefit immensely from the creation of permanent institutional frameworks to tackle the global challenges of the day,” said Diego Area, deputy director of strategic development at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council.
“Our shared interests are clear. We are all democracies and together our nations make up one-third of United Nations member countries and are highly represented in other multilateral organisations,” said Ignacia Ulloa, assistant director at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.
The report recommends specific economic and commercial partnerships for EU-US-LAC cooperation to pursue, building on the promise of the EU-LAC Global Gateway, the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), and potential free trade agreements to be developed between the EU and Mercosur, Chile, and Mexico.
The report finds that trust in transatlantic and transcontinental economic policy also stems from resilient and robust relationships among its people. Concrete strategies featured in the report that would deepen these relationships include expanding programs like Erasmus, 100,000 Strong in the Americas, and the International Visitor Leadership Program such that citizens of all countries in Europe and the Americas are eligible to participate.
In addition, the report emphasises the crucial role of Latin America and the Caribbean in facilitating the green transition. The region generates sixty per cent of its energy from renewables, twice the global average, and also holds fifteen per cent of the world’s oil and gas reserves. As the United States and European Union look to transform their energy supply chains, including a move away from reliance both on Russia and on non-renewables, Latin America and the Caribbean have great potential as partners.
A full copy of the report in English and Spanish is available for download here.
As part of this project, a podcast of the Club de Madrid series ‘Democracy in Practice’ has also emerged. In this episode Carlos Alvarado Quesada, former President of the Republic of Costa Rica and Club de Madrid Member, and Diego Area, Deputy Director of Strategic Development at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Center for Latin America, discuss (in Spanish) how to build a stronger partnership between Europe and the Americas.
