By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
June 21, 2023
Latin American and Caribbean Leaders were in Brussels for the EU-CELAC Summit earlier this week, the first one in eight years. And while the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, has pledged some 45Billion Euros to the region, CELAC pro tempore president, St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, called for more systemic issues to be addressed in the region by the European Union.
In his opening speech before the gathered nations, Gonsalves spoke to the “historical fact that Europe remained Latin America in the Caribbean remade the process remade itself out of this college run of remake, and most of Europe was, and still is overwhelmingly the lobsided beneficiary in a relationship in which our Latin America and our Caribbean have been and are on equally yoked”.
He listed the areas of concerns he felt should be addressed at the summit which included first the EU’s acknowledgement of this “unequal yoke”, which it must address in “advanced sustainable correctives on several fronts” for it to be “in a mutually beneficial manner, but with a special consideration for those among us who historically have been, and are disadvantaged, elemental justice and enlighten self-interest so dictate”.
Gonsalves expressed hopes in the summit arriving at mutually satisfactorily conclusions on a bundle of compelling issues including “sustainable development, hunger, and through security, a meaningful reform of the global financial architecture in accord with the Central thrust of the Bridgestone initiative, renewable energy, ramped up ambitions, and actions on climate, Change mitigation and adaptation, tangible delivery and commitments to climate financial loss and damage funding for vulnerable countries, Public health and pandemics, education, Science and Technology, the frontiers and resources of space, and the deep seabed marine transport, the digital transition”.
He also took time to call for “reparatory justice from the active genocide and the enslavement of African bodies, the cessation of unilateral coercive economic sanctions against some select member countries, the unjust uncomfortable weaponization of the banking and financial systems and the unlawful intervention in the affairs of countries, the quest for peace and security and the promotion of International law”.
The St.Vincent and Grenadines PM added while “these Central issues and more are likely to generate differences of views and even controversies” he said “it was not beyond us collectively to arrive at satisfactory outcomes on most”.
And while he says there is a temptation by those gathered to turn attention the Ukraine war, he reminded them that there were other wars happening in their jurisdiction that needed just as much help and attention, calling for discussions on Ukraine to be placed in other more useful platforms, rather than one dealing with the needs of the Latin American and Caribbean Community.
Highlighting that “the people of Haiti, Palestinians populations in the various parts of Africa, Middle East and Asia have more immediate challenges”, he questioned “the disproportionate global emphasis accorded and thus, they raise undauntable, unanswerable queries arising from a lobsided world, a washed with ghosts from the past, which are yet to be exorcized from the minds of those who have dominated the world’s political economy since the 18th century”.
At the same time the Caribbean leader says he was in no way trying to undermine what was happening in Ukraine, as it held “enduring significance not only for the engaged combatants but to all humanity”. He added that “the EU CELAC summit heralds an opportunity to create and enhance possibilities for humanity. At this, the approaching midnight hour of humanity’s peril, we must seize this historic opportunity beyond the immediate necessary and desirable outcomes of this engagement between our two geographic regions, I am satisfied that the history of the join the between of our respective civilizations have made compromises of all of us, but this does not mean that we must become promising of the ideals. We all dare for the requisites of altering our contemporary condition for the better”.
Under the €45B pledged, some 135 projects are said to be already in the pipeline including two green hydrogen projects as well as a high-performance data cable network to producing the most advanced communication to the region, as well as works on a MRNA vaccine in the combatting against the COVID 19 Virus.