MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Latin America, the EU's strategic investment target for 2023

Albares stressed that Latin America and Africa are the “priority destinations” for EU investment projects.

Ursula von der Leyen convened the first meeting of the Global Gateway Board on Sunday to review the achievements of the first year of implementation of this plan. The President of the European Commission said the EU wants to counter the new Chinese Silk Road and identify projects for 2023 in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

“Spain supports the strategy to promote sustainable development, strengthen the EU as a global player and promote our values and principles in the world,” said the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, one of the attendees at the Global Gateway Board meeting.

Albares stressed that Latin America and Africa are the “priority destinations” for EU investment projects.

Since the launch of the Global Gateway strategy, more than EUR 9 billion in grants have been committed from the EU budget for key investments in all identified sectors in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific.

For the Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia Pacific regions, Brussels plans to submit next Thursday 40 portfolios of European Financial Institutions projects for Operational Board approval under the European Fund for Sustainable Development plus (EFSD+), which is expected to generate more than €50 billion in investments in key sectors.

“Global Gateway,” which aims to mobilize 300 billion in investments by 2027, is “first and foremost a geopolitical project, which seeks to position Europe in a competitive international market,” as “infrastructure investments are at the center of today's geopolitics,” Von der Leyen said in a statement.

Under the EFSD+ guarantee agreement signed in May with the European Investment Bank, for a total of EUR 26.7 billion in guarantees to cover EIB sovereign lending in sectors such as clean energy, green infrastructure and health, 34 projects worth EUR 7.4 billion in investments have already been approved.

As regards the Western Balkans and the Southern and Eastern Neighborhood, the EU, together with European financial institutions, has so far mobilized €14 billion of the €77 billion in total investments expected to be leveraged by 2027, Brussels specified.

The European Commission stressed that this investment strategy is “firmly on track”, with “key” projects to boost digital connectivity through undersea data cables and land connections between the EU and its partners, to increase renewable energy production with investments in solar plants and wind farms, and to increase, for example, access to and manufacturing of vaccines, medicines and health technologies.

For example, Brussels highlighted in the digital sector the Medusa submarine fiber optic cable of 7. 100 kilometers with a total investment of 342 million euros, including an EU grant of 40 million euros, to connect Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia and Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as the extension of the BELLA fiber optic submarine and terrestrial cable from Portugal to Central America and the Caribbean and the implementation of Earth Observation Centers in Panama through the EU's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring eService.

In the energy sector, the Commission highlighted the Trans-Balkan Electricity Corridor to connect the transmission system of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Italy, with an estimated total investment of 41.2 million euros, as well as photovoltaic plants in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and wind farms in North Macedonia and Serbia.

(Source: EFE)