This year’s Reflection Forum was held in Casa de América, in Madrid from 10th to 11th of July 2017 under the theme “Strengthening the economic dimension of the CELAC-EU Partnership: A dialogue on productivity growth”. The event organised by the EU-LAC Foundation had the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain and the European Commission.
The Reflection Forum is part of the preparatory activities of the next Summit CELA-EU in El Salvador (26-27 October 2017) following the commitments adopted in the CELAC-EU Santo Domingo Declaration of 2016 as well as the mandate of the Foundation in order to carry out consultations at different levels with the business sector and other relevant stakeholders to identify objectives and modalities for a possible CELAC-EU partnership in the economic field.
This Reflection Forum, whose programme was developed in close coordination with the EU and CELAC PPT, is meant to provide a contribution to this mandate by offering a space for informal dialogue and exchange of views between senior officials from the EU and the CELAC members states, representatives of the productive sector as well as representatives of regional and international organisations and of EU-CELAC cooperation programmes, with the focus on economic growth and productivity.
The 2017 Reflection Forum was dedicated to explore the means to give the CELAC-EU economic relations a new impetus; to identify the constitutive elements of an enabling environment for bi-regional growth, productivity and investments; to delineate options to foster dialogue and cooperation on productivity growth between governments and productive sector representatives as well as to formulate proposals that will feed into the preparation of the 2017 CELAC-EU Summit in El Salvador.
The Forum shall complement the work undertaken by the working group on productivity set up in the aftermath of the EU-CELAC Senior Official Meeting of 4 April 2017.
Please find the pictures of the event in our Flick page here
