The 2016 Reflection Forum took place on November 29th and 30th in Berlin, organised by the EU-LAC Foundation in cooperation with the EULAC Focus Consortium. The Forum on “Revisiting the CELAC-EU Ministerial Meeting 2016 - Mapping the path towards the forthcoming CELAC-EU Summit”, responded to the Foundation’s mandate to encourage the debate on relevant topics for both regions and their strategic partnership, promoting contributions from academics and other sectors of the civil society involved in the process.
In this regard, representatives from the 62 EU-LAC Foundation Members and academic experts and practitioners from both regions were invited to participate in the discussions. The experts were identified with support of EULAC Focus, a consortium of 19 universities and research institutes headed by the University of Barcelona, which is funded by the European Union Programme Horizon 2020, and aims to analyse the perspectives of the bi-regional relations, especially in the scientific, academic, social and cultural area.
Following the “Chatham House rule”, the participating officials and experts found a space for debate and dynamic dialogue. In this atmosphere, they addressed the two specific objectives of the Forum: reflecting on the inputs needed after the Ministerial guidance in Santo Domingo as well as complementing and deepening the assessment of advances made on the EU-CELAC Action Plan.
The one and a half days’ agenda, at the Technical University of Berlin, attended by the President of the EU-LAC Foundation Leonel Fernández, included working groups on the Action Plan topics, in order to foster mutual knowledge and interaction among the participants in an informal environment, and where the exchange of ideas was made in an atmosphere of trust.
The Reflection Fora started as an informal support platform to the bi-regional political dialogue. In this third edition, the Forum sought to follow-up the topics addressed in the CELAC-EU Ministerial Meeting 2016 in Santo Domingo.
The Foundation organised this Reflection Forum edition thanks to funding provided by the Federal Foreign Ministry of Germany and the European Union.
