Regional strategy for Latin America 2007-2013

The regional strategy paper for Latin America identifies social cohesion, regional integration and strengthening mutual understanding as the priority areas for cooperation between that region and the European Union in 2007-2013 and sets out the regional indicative programme for the period 2007-2010.

ACT

European Commission – Latin America – Regional programming document 2007-2013.

SUMMARY

The regional strategy paper (RSP) sets out the objectives and priorities for cooperation with Latin America for the period 2007-2013. This region comprises: Mexico, Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama), the Andean Community (Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru), Chile and Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela).

The aim is to strengthen the strategic association between the two regions in the political, economic and social spheres.

Common challenges

Improving social cohesion is an essential element of the fight against poverty and inequalities. The region’s huge inequalities in wealth distribution and income levels are sources of exclusion and political instability. Job creation must be stimulated as an effective means of tackling unemployment. Finally, there is a need to strengthen democracy and human rights, including protection for the rights of women, minorities and indigenous peoples, by encouraging civil society to play a greater role in the political sphere.

Stimulating economic relations is a challenge that can be addressed through investment to boost capacity for innovation and the competitiveness of infrastructures, research, technological development, education, training, the environment and natural resources management. A revival of trade and investment between the two regions is the key to sustaining growth and job creation and to combating poverty.

Encouraging cooperation is vital to tackling regional problems and supporting sustainable development. Cooperation must be political, economic and commercial and must take account of social and environmental concerns (climate change, water, protecting biodiversity and forest cover). The EU and Latin America attach great importance to multinational systems and must work together towards building up a set of transparent and equitable global rules, towards global governance and towards tackling climate change, as well as cooperating on human rights.

2007-2013 Regional Programming Priority Areas

The first focal area is social cohesion (reducing poverty, inequalities and exclusion). This priority aims, more specifically, at promoting the development of public policy in social sectors, increasing public spending and public social investment, improving tax policies and income redistribution through EUROsociAL (EU-LA technical cooperation programme to promote social cohesion), stimulating dialogue, exchanging good practice, implementing joint monitoring and stepping up the fight against drugs.

The second priority in the EU’s strategy for the region, supplementing the subregional approach, is regional integration with a view to:

promoting the activities of business networks in the area of trade and investment;
promoting dialogue and institutional capacity building on policy, macroeconomic planning, standards, human rights, infrastructures, the environment, etc., in order to foster sustainable investment flows and promote sustainable development;
promoting cooperation, regional dialogue and the exchange of experience and good practice on environmental aspects of sustainable development (climate change, water, biodiversity, forests);
promoting interconnectivity and regulatory dialogue;
promoting studies and conferences to meet regional priorities.

The third priority is investment in people and increasing mutual understanding. Cooperation in this area focuses on improving higher education in the region and strengthening its competitiveness (chiefly through training programmes) and on promoting and deepening mutual understanding between the two regions.

There must be consultation and dialogue on the introduction and implementation of regional programmes. To maximise their efficiency, particular attention has to be paid to increasing the visibility and stakeholders’ knowledge of these programmes and exploiting their results, to strengthening complementarity and synergies, to using appropriate tools, to tackling disparities, to involving public and private stakeholders, to incorporating cross-cutting issues and to encouraging effective management.

Modalities

The current RSP comprises a regional indicative programme (RIP) covering the period 2007-2010. A second RIP will be drawn up for the period 2011-2013. The total programme budget (2007-2013) is €556 million, of which 35 % is allocated to social cohesion projects, 25 % to regional integration and 40 % to training and tackling regional challenges.

The beneficiaries of these programmes are national, regional and local administrations, associations representing civil society, organisations representing the business sector, stakeholders in the higher education sector, non-governmental organisations, etc.

The activities supported include evaluations, studies, reports, publications, dissemination, seminars, meetings, training schemes, exchanges of teaching staff, scholarships, joint projects developed with networks of institutions, mobility of actors in the education sector, quality control, exchanges of information, and also actions supporting the development of statistics, databases and policy instruments. Performance indicators will be instituted to measure the impact of the various projects.

Background

EU-LA cooperation slots into the framework of the stronger partnership and the objectives fixed by the Guadalajara and Vienna summits. The RSP for 2007-2013 identifies the priorities for support through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI). It complements the strategies for each subregion and country with this type of programme.

See also