The First Preparatory Meeting for III Academic Summit Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic between June 21st and 22nd. During the conference, observations and proposals from previous CELAC-EU Summit Declarations and Academic Seminars were confirmed, as well as strategies to strengthen the collaboration in research and postgraduate programmes identified, amongst others. In detail, the meeting focused on the areas of higher education; science, technology and innovation; engagement of academia with civil society and engagement of academia with public policies.
University and government authorities, academics, researchers, members of research centres and institutes, public and private networks and projects from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean participated in the seminar.
Leonel Fernandez, President of the EU-LAC Foundation, engaged as invited speaker at the inauguration act and highlighted the importance of higher education for the Latin American and Caribbean countries in terms of development and integration into the globalised economy.
