MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU/Latam summit results “not sufficient”; new “faster pace” needed

Chile’s Piñera will be hosting the next summit in Santiago, 2012

Chilean president Sebastián Piñera said that the results of the VI European Union/Latam-Caribbean leaders’ summit in Madrid which closed Tuesday was “insufficient” since adequate solutions for present-day problems faced by the regions were lacking.

Piñera said that at the next summit to be hosted by Chile in 2012 “hopefully” the meeting will evolve at “XXIst century pace”.

“We have results, but I consider them not sufficient. I feel we are addressing old problems with old solutions”, said Piñera on assessing advances at the summit which brought together over fifty heads of government.

The Chilean president said that “different solutions” exist and warned that “in the current world context problems are moving faster than solutions”, and advanced what he described as “three main challenges” which most countries of the world face.

Among them is “intelligent growth” in consonance with the XXI century and the information and knowledge community, in a way that it is “sustainable and inclusive, capable of defeating poverty and have us all in”.

“We are not achieving the appropriate results that we need in this front but which we can reach”, said Piñera who underlined the need “to move at another pace, another speed” so that changes effectively become real.

Piñera then mentioned the “re-engineering” of world multilateral organizations since we have institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, United Nations “created six decades ago for a world that is entirely different from nowadays”.

Hopefully when the summit in Santiago in two years time, “we can address problems with the same speed those problems are generated”, and establishing leaderships in our continents and at global level”.

More specifically regarding the region, Piñera said that there are two “visions” for the development of Latam countries: one led by Venezuela and the other by countries such as Chile and Brazil.

“These are two visions, --not blocks because that means confrontation--, to help us reach out for democracy, economic development and even social integration”, pointed out Piñera.

One of them includes Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and possibly a few more, and the other “vision” has Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay.

“We believe in western democracy, rule of the law, independent branches of government, freedom of expression, rotation in office, market economy with social emphasis, open competitive markets, integration” and based on this “there is no reason for the region not to defeat under development”.

“We have been independent for 200 years in a continent blessed by God, a vast generous territory however we have been unable to defeat underdevelopment and poverty. We have all the resources to become a developed continent with no extreme poverty, and equal opportunities for everybody”, he added.

“We trust the recently created Unasur (Union of South American Nations), but it has to give evidence with facts that it effectively complies with its objectives: strengthen democracy and facilitate economic development”.

Finally Piñera said that Chile preaches and practices free trade and open markets, “we have trade agreements with 56 countries only comparable to Mexico and Israel and we have done very well with free trade and open markets”.