EU/CAN — Summit between Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union

EU CAN Sum­mit (Madrid, 19 May 2010) Joint Com­mu­niqué
1. On the occa­sion of the Sixth Sum­mit between Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and the Euro­pean Union, held in Madrid, the Heads of State of the Andean Com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber coun­tries, the Pres­i­dent of Bolivia, Evo Morales, the Pres­i­dent of Colom­bia, Álvaro Uribe, the Pres­i­dent of Ecuador, Rafael Cor­rea, and the Pres­i­dent of Peru, Alan Gar­cía, accom­pa­nied by the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at of the Andean Com­mu­ni­ty, Adalid Con­tr­eras, held a work­ing ses­sion with the Euro­pean Union, rep­re­sent­ed by Her­man Van Rompuy, Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Coun­cil, and José Manuel Durão Bar­roso, Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, in the pres­ence of José Luis Rodríguez Zap­a­tero, Pres­i­dent of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment and cur­rent hold­er of the rotat­ing Pres­i­den­cy of the Euro­pean Union.

2. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives exam­ined the state of rela­tions between the Euro­pean Union and the Andean Com­mu­ni­ty and not­ed that they were mak­ing good head­way. In par­tic­u­lar, they wel­comed the recent meet­ing of the EU-CAN Joint Committee. 

3. The lead­ers held a dia­logue on the results of the Copen­hagen Con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change, and on the future of nego­ti­a­tions on that sub­ject. In this con­text, they empha­sised that the nego­ti­a­tions must con­tin­ue in the frame­work and with the pro­ce­dures estab­lished by the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change and the Kyoto Pro­to­col. They agreed on the need, through a trans­par­ent and inclu­sive nego­ti­at­ing process con­duct­ed with mutu­al trust, to reach deci­sions at the Novem­ber 2010 Mex­i­co meet­ing that would make it pos­si­ble to achieve a com­pre­hen­sive, ambi­tious and legal­ly effec­tive out­come in the fight against cli­mate change.

With­out prej­u­dice to their autonomous nation­al poli­cies on hydro­car­bons and cli­mate change, they expressed their sup­port for the Yasuní-ITT Ini­tia­tive, pre­sent­ed by Ecuador, to set up an effec­tive vol­un­tary mea­sure to address the prob­lem of cli­mate change and to ensure the preser­va­tion of one of the areas of great­est bio­di­ver­si­ty in the world.

The Pres­i­dent of Bolivia pre­sent­ed the results of the Peo­ples’ World Con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change and Moth­er Earth’s Rights, held in Cochabam­ba from 20 to 22 April 2010, and urged the oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives to con­sid­er its rec­om­men­da­tions and fol­low them up.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tives fur­ther took note of the Dia­logue for Pro­gres­sive Action, held in Carta­ge­na from 24 to 26 March 2010 and the LAC-EU dia­logue held in Lima from 26 to 27 April 2010.

To com­plete this theme, the Andean Com­mu­ni­ty set out the region’s achieve­ments in apply­ing the Andean Envi­ron­men­tal Agen­da and the Euro­pean Union stat­ed that cli­mate change would be one of its pri­or­i­ty areas in future coop­er­a­tion with the Andean Community.

4. They also con­firmed their com­mit­ment to give greater polit­i­cal impe­tus to the bi-region­al dia­logue to tack­le the glob­al issue of drugs, based on the prin­ci­ple of com­mon and shared respon­si­bil­i­ty, by strength­en­ing the EU-Andean Com­mu­ni­ty High Lev­el Spe­cialised Dia­logue on Drugs, an exist­ing mech­a­nism for dia­logue and coop­er­a­tion between the two blocs on the sub­ject. They under­took to hold the XIth meet­ing of the mech­a­nism in the sec­ond half of 2010. In this con­text, they stressed the impor­tance of tack­ling the world drugs prob­lem in a coor­di­nat­ed way, through a com­pre­hen­sive and bal­anced approach, in order to achieve greater effec­tive­ness. They empha­sised region­al projects approved with Euro­pean Union fund­ing, which will con­tribute to con­tin­u­ing imple­men­ta­tion of the Andean Plan for Com­bat­ing Illic­it Drugs and Relat­ed Offences and the Andean Strat­e­gy for Alter­na­tive, Full and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in accor­dance with nation­al policies. 

5. Final­ly, they empha­sised the strong his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and social bonds between the Andean Com­mu­ni­ty and the EU, wel­comed the launch and progress of the struc­tured and com­pre­hen­sive LAC-EU dia­logue on migra­tion, stressed the need to enhance this area of dia­logue from a per­spec­tive of polit­i­cal com­mit­ment and expressed sup­port for the achieve­ment of its aims. They recalled the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion of migrants to the eco­nom­ic and socio-cul­tur­al devel­op­ment of migrants’ soci­eties of ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­firmed the impor­tance of con­tin­u­ing to work in areas of com­mon inter­est and ben­e­fit in rela­tion to migra­tion in the areas agreed on in the Dia­logue, with a view to deal­ing joint­ly with issues linked to migra­tion, while ful­ly respect­ing the human rights of the migrants. 

Source:
Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union