Opinion – Latinoamérica21: Pandemic opened a window of opportunity for relations between Europe and Latin America

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On December 31, 2019, while practically the entire planet celebrated the turn of the year, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission (Hubei Province, China) reported a set of pneumonia cases in the city.

Few imagined at the time that a pandemic was brewing that would alter the global order.

2019 had been a complex year, in which dissatisfaction with the political and socioeconomic situation had led citizens in different parts of the world to mobilize against their authorities.

From Lebanon to Ecuador, via France or Puerto Rico, the population raised its voice against the economic measures adopted by their states, climate change or sexist violence.

However, 2020 would be the most complex year globally in recent history.

On January 25, 2020, the first Covid case was recorded in Europe, when an 80-year-old man from Hubei province was infected with the virus and died just two weeks later.

On February 21, a major outbreak was reported in Italy, and on March 13, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Europe to be the epicenter of the pandemic.

The pandemic arrived in Latin America a little later, with the first case recorded at the end of February 2020, in Brazil.

However, the virulence with which it affected the region soon became apparent: although Latin America represents 9% of the world’s population, it was responsible for a fifth of infections and 30% of deaths in 2020.

In a context of a health crisis, which would later lead to an economic and social crisis, the need to establish cooperation mechanisms to face a problem of global dimensions soon became evident.

In this regard, it is worth rescuing the concept of “resilience”, which was the protagonist of the European Union’s (EU) Global and Security Strategy years ago.

Following this principle, the EU assumed that, in an increasingly complex and globalized world, it was necessary to strengthen the capacity of countries to face external shocks. Therefore, cooperation with less resilient developing countries was an important point on the European agenda.

The pandemic undoubtedly served to put this principle into practice. While Covid has put EU health systems under severe stress, in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) the response capacity was even more precarious due to the weakness of their systems.

Despite the adoption of social distancing and/or confinement policies, there was a strong risk of collapse. Informality and social inequality acted as obstacles to the success of measures against the virus, and the limited fiscal capacity of the States prevented the increase in health expenditures and the protection of the most vulnerable sectors.

In addition, the weakness of regional integration systems made it difficult for countries to coordinate and adopt measures that would make it possible to jointly face the pandemic.

In this context, and after years of relative silence on the bi-regional agenda, the pandemic has reactivated the channels for dialogue between LAC and the EU.

On 14 and 15 December 2020, the informal EU-LAC ministerial meeting was held in a hybrid format. There, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Affairs pledged to relaunch transatlantic relations beyond the borders of the United States.

In addition to working on the fight against the pandemic and the region’s most urgent needs, outstanding issues needed to be addressed. Among them, the social and institutional demands that inspired the 2019 mobilizations, the growing polarization and the emergence of authoritarian tendencies in certain countries in the region.

This commitment has materialized in some results, such as the launch, last June by the European Commission, of an initiative to strengthen the production of vaccines and medicines in LAC and strengthen public health systems in the region; the proposal of the Spanish presidency of the European Council for the second half of 2023, to deepen ties between regions; or the project to promote sustainable linkages and investments in the digital, energy and transport fields, as well as to strengthen health, education and research systems.

The health crisis highlighted the neglect that relations between the EU and LAC had suffered in the years leading up to the pandemic.

And the post-Covid context has highlighted the risks that this implies, not only for the development of the region, but also for the world order.

For example, the rapprochement of some Latin American countries with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and the rejection of sanctions imposed by the EU.

In order to avoid a new cooling in the EU-LAC ties, it is necessary, along with cooperation in the aforementioned areas, the application of economic policies that allow trade exchanges on equal terms.

Furthermore, it is important for the EU to provide financial assistance to LAC in order to overcome the socio-economic crisis in which it is plunged and reduce the dependence of countries in the region on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Finally, the EU must overcome the homogenous vision of LAC. Since you want to build solid alliances, you need to understand the differences and specific needs of different countries.

Every crisis is an opportunity, and the world’s recovery from the impact of the coronavirus is a global challenge that can serve as an element of cohesion.

May it serve as an incentive to strengthen a strategic partnership based on dialogue, development and multilateralism.

Translation of Giulia Gaspar

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