EU-CELAC Summit In Brussels
St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves stated on Friday that the EU, Caribbean, and Latin America are at a point in history where a model relationship between developed and poor countries can be developed.
According to Gonsalves, on that premise, Caribbean leaders have made it plain to EU leaders that the EU-CELAC summit, which begins on Monday, shouldn’t be dominated by Ukraine matters.
“We have advised the EU not to attempt to turn this summit into a locale making the Ukraine issue dominant. Ukraine is being dealt with in other important forums. United Nations, the Security Council, what we want, however, is to encourage peace because the Ukraine war, as indeed other conflicts across the world, disrupted supply chains, caused shortages, and increased prices, which brought hardship to our People”.
“We want to strengthen the strategic partnership, but it is a partnership where we must not be unequally yoked. Europe remade Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the process, it remade itself. So what they did in remaking our region, our hemisphere, our Latin America, and our Caribbean, they have not quite yet understood how they remade themselves, and that has to be part of their own consciousness, and historically we have been unequally yoked, but we must not continue to be unequally yoked”.
As stated by Gonsalves, it is critical for us in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to understand how, as a nation of 110,000 people, what happens elsewhere in the world immediately affects us.
“If you think you can stay safe and cocooned in your village or your hamlet, you are absolutely mistaken”.
“We have to use the sovereignty and independence that we possess and work in a multilateral framework because it cannot be a position where the strong nations do what they can and the poor and weak suffer what they must. That cannot be a path for peace, stability, prosperity, and security for all”, Gonsalves said.
The EU-CELAC summit will be held in Brussels on July 17-18.
