In his remarks today, Monday, 20 April, during the strategic debate of the Informal Foreign Affairs Council on Latin America and the Caribbean, Alternate Foreign Minister Nikos Chountis, having welcomed the recent rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S., as well as EU High Representative Mogherini’s visit to the region, highlighted the need to shape, on the EU level, an enhanced strategy with the economically and politically fast-developing countries of the region.
Mr. Chountis also underscored the need for the development of political relations to be based on relations of equality and respect for the democratic choices and popular sovereignty of each country, pointing out that the unequal EU-LAC economic relations to date – to the detriment of the countries in the LAC region – should from this point forward be mutually beneficial, concurrently expanding trade relations.
In closing his remarks on EU-LAC relations, Mr. Chountis stressed that salient global challenges, including climate change, narcotics trafficking, and security, cannot be effectively confronted except in cooperation with these countries. The region, he noted, can and must be a model for cooperation and not a field of competition in the exercising of foreign policy
April 20, 2015