European Council President Charles Michel said that “Russia must not be allowed to triumph.” “It will be a recipe for disaster for multilateralism and our rules-based system,” he said.
For his part, the pro tempore president of CELAC, Ralph Gonçalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, defended that the summit “must not become another useless battlefield for speeches on this topic (war), which has been and continues to be addressed in other more relevant forums”.
an investment plan
The last summit of both blocks was in 2015, but the diversity of positions within the 33 CELAC countries complicates consensus on various issues with the EU. In this context, the announcement of a major European investment plan paved the way for dialogue.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Monday an investment of 45,000 million euros (50,560 million dollars) over a period of several years for the economies of Latin America through the Global Gateway program, an EU plan in response to massive investment from China.
Von der Leyen met in the morning with the Brazilian president, who told him that his country has “a commitment to zero deforestation by 2030 in the Amazon.”
The issue of deforestation and environmental issues are one of the stumbling blocks in the negotiations for a trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay).