The Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation, Adrián Bonilla, travelled to Prague, Czech Republic, from 9 to 11 May 2022, where he held different meetings with partners of the International Organisation, in addition to participating in the Conference "Czech Republic and Ibero-America", organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
On Monday, Director Bonilla met with Jarmila Povejšilová, Director, and Markéta Fajmonová, from the Latin American Department of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The participants of the meeting discussed possible forms of collaboration in the framework of the upcoming Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2022 that would aim at strengthening the visibility of bi-regional relations between the European Union and CELAC countries. This was followed by a meeting with the Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Věra Jeřábková, where joint initiatives involving young diplomats were discussed. In the framework of this official mission in Prague, Director Adrián Bonilla also discussed with students of the Diplomatic Academy at the Foreign Ministry the actuality of the EU-CELAC strategic partnership.
On Tuesday, 10 May, the conference "Czech Republic and Ibero-America" organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the framework of the Ibero-American Week in Prague was attended by numerous diplomatic and consular representatives of Latin American and Caribbean countries in the Czech Republic, representatives of the European Commission, the Cervantes Institute and the Camões Institute, as well as Czech authorities and academics.
The conference was opened by Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, who announced the objective of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU to boost bi-regional relations between the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean and the follow-up of the EU-Mexico, EU-Chile and EU-Mercosur bilateral agreements. The Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation intervened in the political panel on "Ibero-America on the eve of the Czech Presidency of the EU" with a presentation on regionalism and the culture of multilateralism in EU-Latin American and Caribbean relations. This panel also included the participation of Edita Hrdá, Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the EU; Brian Glynn, Director for the Americas of the European External Action Service (EEAS); Martin Palouš, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States; Federico Villegas, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Argentina in Geneva and President of the UN Human Rights Council; Radek Buben, Director of the Centre for Ibero-American Studies at Charles University in Prague.
Closing the mission, there was a meeting between Adrián Bonilla and the latter, to discuss their institutional agendas in the framework of the European Year of Youth 2022.
