IV EU-Central America Summit Joint Communiqué

IV EU-Cen­tral Amer­i­ca Sum­mit Joint Com­mu­niqué (Madrid, May 19th 2010)
1. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Euro­pean Union (EU), rep­re­sent­ed by Her­man Van Rompuy, Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Coun­cil and José Manuel Durão Bar­roso, Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of José Luis Rodríguez Zap­a­tero, Pres­i­dent of the Span­ish Gov­ern­ment and rotat­ing Pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Union, held a meet­ing in Madrid on 19 May 2010. Dur­ing this meet­ing they stressed the fruit­ful nature of the rela­tions exist­ing between the two regions, which have evolved in the frame­work of the San José Dia­logue estab­lished in 1984, and they con­firmed the views and com­mit­ments made in Lima, on 17 May 2008.

2. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment warm­ly wel­comed the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the nego­ti­a­tions for an Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment between the EU and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and com­mend­ed their respec­tive nego­ti­at­ing teams for their hard work. 

3. This Agree­ment, which com­pris­es all aspects of the bi-region­al rela­tion­ship, polit­i­cal dia­logue, coop­er­a­tion and trade, is the most con­crete man­i­fes­ta­tion of the strength of our links. By foment­ing polit­i­cal dia­logue and coop­er­a­tion on issues of com­mon inter­est, and by boost­ing our respec­tive trade flows as well as invest­ments, the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment her­alds a new era in rela­tions between the Euro­pean Union and Cen­tral America.

4. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment under­take to act in favour of a prompt rat­i­fi­ca­tion and entry into force of the Asso­ci­a­tion Agreement.

5. The lead­ers take note of the deci­sion by Pana­ma to launch its process of inclu­sion in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ic Inte­gra­tion sub­sys­tem, using as a ref­er­ence the road map con­tained in the tech­ni­cal doc­u­ment “Steps to be fol­lowed by Pana­ma for its inclu­sion in the eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion sub­sys­tem”, sub­mit­ted by the Gov­ern­ment of Pana­ma to the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters for Eco­nom­ic Intergation.

6. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment stressed that secu­ri­ty is one of the pri­or­i­ty ele­ments on their joint agen­da; inse­cu­ri­ty pos­es great risks for human, social and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, and – con­se­quent­ly – for demo­c­ra­t­ic sta­bil­i­ty in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment agreed to inten­si­fy coop­er­a­tion regard­ing the chal­lenges posed by ter­ror­ism, trans-nation­al organ­ised crime, cor­rup­tion, ille­gal traf­fick­ing in arms and ammu­ni­tion, the world drug prob­lem, drugs-relat­ed arms traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing, traf­fick­ing in per­sons, espe­cial­ly women and chil­dren, and smug­gling of migrants.

7. The Par­ties agreed that the effec­tive exer­cise of democ­ra­cy, rule of law and respect for human rights are essen­tial for human secu­ri­ty. They wel­comed the evo­lu­tion and efforts made by the Cen­tral Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments to devel­op and imple­ment appro­pri­ate nation­al and region­al frame­works, poli­cies and leg­is­la­tion in this direc­tion. They com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued dia­logue and coop­er­a­tion on the rein­force­ment of the capac­i­ties of the State and of civ­il soci­ety with a view to fur­ther progress.

8. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment not­ed that Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries share com­mon secu­ri­ty chal­lenges that also have a region­al dimen­sion. There­fore, they acknowl­edged the impor­tance of an effec­tive region­al strat­e­gy for secu­ri­ty, in syn­er­gy and coor­di­na­tion with the nation­al strate­gies of Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­tries. In this respect they wel­comed the com­pre­hen­sive region­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy being imple­ment­ed by SICA. The Euro­pean side reit­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to bilat­er­al as well as extend­ed region­al coop­er­a­tion in this sector. 

9. The Par­ties empha­sised that ad hoc meet­ings on secu­ri­ty issues could help to improve the exchange of infor­ma­tion and to elab­o­rate a proac­tive coop­er­a­tion approach.

10. The par­ties wel­comed the hold­ing, in 2010, of the first inter­na­tion­al sup­port con­fer­ence for the Cen­tral Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy, which aims to raise aware­ness and obtain the back­ing of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in help­ing the region to tack­le the secu­ri­ty prob­lems that beset it.

11. The two regions exchanged views on the issue of cli­mate change, par­tic­u­lar­ly in prepa­ra­tion for a suc­cess­ful out­come to the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties of the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change to be held in Can­cún, Mex­i­co, at the end of the year (COP 16). They agreed on the neces­si­ty to ensure a trans­par­ent and inclu­sive nego­ti­a­tion process lead­ing to an ambi­tious, com­pre­hen­sive, effec­tive and legal­ly bind­ing agreement.

12. After COP 15 in Copen­hagen and work­ing togeth­er ahead of COP 16 of the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, recog­nis­ing sci­en­tif­ic views regard­ing the lim­its for the increase in the glob­al tem­per­a­ture and build­ing on progress made so far in the for­mal mul­ti­lat­er­al process, through the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Pro­to­col, the Par­ties expressed their sup­port to Mex­i­co in obtain­ing con­crete results, through an agree­ment aimed at reduc­ing and lim­it­ing green­house gas emis­sions in order to achieve the ulti­mate objec­tive of the UNFCCC, tak­ing into account the prin­ci­ple of com­mon but dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed respon­si­bil­i­ties and respec­tive capabilities.

13. They stressed the impor­tance of low car­bon emis­sion devel­op­ment strate­gies and the need to urgent­ly inte­grate the effects of cli­mate change in all rel­e­vant plan­ning and deci­sion mak­ing, in order to guide and effec­tive­ly imple­ment nation­al mit­i­ga­tion actions and adap­ta­tion mea­sures, as stat­ed in Bali, in the con­text of increased coop­er­a­tion on tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer and cli­mate-relat­ed finance.

14. They con­curred that ambi­tious and com­pre­hen­sive cli­mate change poli­cies con­tribute to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment as well as to ener­gy secu­ri­ty; and that they gen­er­ate mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits in terms of socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, inter alia by cre­at­ing jobs and invest­ment opportunities. 

15. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment under­lined the vast array of exper­tise and know-how exist­ing in each region and encour­aged the use of the exist­ing dia­logue struc­ture as plat­forms for fur­ther exchange of expe­ri­ences and best prac­tices between each region and with­in each region

16. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment wel­comed the launch of the Latin Amer­i­ca Invest­ment Facil­i­ty (LAIF) at the EU-LAC Sum­mit and stressed that the first oper­a­tion approved under that facil­i­ty was an ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy pro­gramme for Cen­tral Amer­i­can MSMEs, under a con­sor­tium set up between Germany’s KfW and the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Bank for Eco­nom­ic Inte­gra­tion (BCIE).

17. The Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment agreed to hold the next Sum­mit with­in the frame­work of the VII Sum­mit between the Euro­pean Union and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in Chile in 2012. 

Source:
Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union