On 2 March, the Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation, Dr Adrián Bonilla participated in the panel "From the global to the regional: Latin America and its relationship with the United States, the European Union, China and Russia" at the VI. Santo Domingo International Forum organised by FUNGLODE - Global Foundation for Democracy and Development. The Forum was held under the theme "Latin America: global and regional trends 2022" with the aim of taking stock of the Latin American reality in the current year.
The panel consisted of Arturo Valenzuela, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations at Georgetown University and Dmitriy Razumovskiy, Director of the Latin American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and was moderated by Alejandra Liriano, an expert in international relations, diplomacy and defence and security affairs.
The discussion focused on the challenges that most Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries face at two levels of analysis, international and regional. At the international level, experts agreed that the role of LAC can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, the region is relevant in a possible scenario of power-sharing among the most relevant actors. If the events in Ukraine continue to generate an international order that prolongs the scenario of the Second World War, the international scenario would be configured around a multipolar space, in which the United States and China are present, but the European Union and Russia also participate as actors capable of transforming contexts. On the other hand, if we continue in a bipolar scenario, where the United States and China, above all, are widely recognised as sources of power, LAC governments will continue to choose the most convenient position in an environment characterised by segmented economic and technological spaces.
In this context, the Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation highlighted the relevance of the bi-regional agenda between the European Union (EU) and LAC, which is expressed in cooperation policies and strategic partnership. There is a contemporary agenda that includes issues of science and technology, climate change, sustainability, social cohesion policies, gender equality and human security.
At the regional level, the experts concluded that LAC is a region where the expansion of the middle class, now the majority and educated group, has the capacity to influence the decisions that are taken in the political sphere. As a result, there are two phenomena that currently deserve our full attention. On the one hand, citizens are calling for the creation of institutions that endorse transparency, condemn corruption and contribute to governance. But on the other hand, we see fragmented societies facing sources of social grievances, and vulnerable governments elected by specific groups, but governing without the support of the majority.
The Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo - FUNGLODE, is one of the four strategic partners of the EU-LAC Foundation, and in this sense, both institutions collaborate frequently in opening spaces for reflection around the bi-regional strategic agenda between the EU and LAC.
Developed in a hybrid format, the forum presentations and discussions are available on the YouTube channel Funglode Multimedia. They can be shared and downloaded here.
