EURO-LATIN AMERICAN PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY

Message from the EuroLat Assembly to the EU – Rio Group XIVth Ministerial Meeting (Prague, 13 May 2009)

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EN EN Message from the EuroLat Assembly to the EU – Rio Group XIVth Ministerial Meeting (Prague, 13 May 2009)

Following on from the proceedings at its Third Ordinary Plenary Session, held in Madrid from 6 to 8 April 2009, the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat), the parliamentary institution of the Bi-regional Strategic Partnership between the European Union (EU) and and the (LAC), is putting forward its proposals and suggestions for the main topics to be discussed at the EU – Rio Group XIVth Ministerial Meeting, which will take place in Prague on 13 May 2009. EuroLat seeks to oversee, and ensure compliance with, the Lima Agenda, adopted at the Vth EU-LAC Summit, held in Lima on 16 May 2008, which has charted the fundamental goals of the Bi-regional Strategic Partnership, focusing on the one hand on the eradication of poverty, inequality, and exclusion and, on the other, on sustainable development, the environment, climate change, and energy.

EuroLat considers that there is a unique opportunity at this point in time to achieve substantive results by adopting a coordinated approach to the economic and financial crisis, energy security, and climate change. That being the case, it hereby submits the following proposals and recommendations to the Ministerial Meeting between the EU and the Rio Group, one of the bodies responsible for developing the Bi-regional Strategic Partnership.

The Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly,

As regards the restoration of financial stability and world economic growth

 Urges the governments of the EU Member States and the Rio Group countries to intensify their cooperation in financial and macroeconomic matters and coordinate their fiscal stimulus measures in order to overcome the economic and financial crisis and cushion its effects on the most vulnerable individuals and economic sectors;

 Calls on those governments to implement further measures to boost demand, not least by bolstering household and business demand, supporting employment, and stimulating demand directly by means of public investment in research and development, technological innovation, education, and the modernisation of infrastructure;

 Reiterates that the credit markets must, as a matter of priority, be restored to normal operation so as to ease the flow of low-interest credit to families and credit to industry and small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, this being a sine qua non for the effectiveness of fiscal stimuli;

 Calls for fiscal measures to be consistent with longer term aims such as sustainability of public finances, higher productivity, and measures to combat climate change;

 Calls on the governments of the EU Member States and the Rio Group countries to ensure that people are protected during the crisis by means of combating speculation and to adopt specific measures to promote employment, strengthen public services, and ensure that people enjoy a range of social rights that provide universal cover and equal access to free health and education, along with specific measures to protect groups at risk;

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EN  Urges that protectionism be rejected and that international trade should, on the contrary, be encouraged by concluding the WTO Doha Development Round without further delay, as well as through the early conclusion of association agreements between the EU and Central America, the , and ; also maintains that a multilateral initiative should be launched with the aim of financing trade;

 Calls for commitments to increasing development aid to be met with a view to achieving the Millennium Development Goals;

 Recommends that the EU Member States and the Rio Group countries, especially those which also belong to the G-20, support reform of the international financial system and its institutions based on the principles of transparency, responsibility, effectiveness, and integrity and on greater representation of the emerging economies;

 Proposes that the IMF be afforded more effective means of oversight in order to strengthen its crisis prevention role and that its resources, along with those of the World Bank, be increased substantially;

 Supports and endorses the conclusions of the recent G-20 summit, held in London on 2 April, and urges all Member States to ratify the decisions concerned within the various multilateral organisations, including the UN, and to commit themselves to their implementation at national and regional level;

 Supports the initiative of the G-20 and the UN’s call for a conference, to be held in June at the highest level, for the transformation of the world economic and financial system into a fairer, more equitable, and more democratic system;

 Suggests that a consensus be reached on a regional charter for sustainable economic activity, based on market forces but avoiding excesses, thereby taking the first step with a view to establishing a body of rules for world governance;

 Calls for credit rating agencies and all financial markets, products, and operators to be subject to regulation and supervision, without exception and regardless of their country of origin, especially where private equity funds – hedge funds included – are concerned;

 Reiterates that combating tax evasion, financial crime, and money laundering, as well as cutting off funding for terrorism, have to be treated as the matters of greatest urgency;

 Calls for the Partnership to play a leading role in protecting the financial system in the face of operations mounted in territories where there is little or no transparency, willingness to cooperate, or regulation, including offshore centres; accordingly proposes that a list be compiled to identify such territories and sanctions defined for the purpose of enforcing the necessary countermeasures; calls on the EU Member States and the Rio Group countries to act at once to abolish all tax havens on their territory and to work at international level for the abolition of the rest and for sanctions against companies and individuals resorting to their services;

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EN  Calls for common principles to be adopted on corporate governance and pay practices in order to rule out the possibility of excessive risks;

 Recommends, given the political conditions, the creation of regional institutions to administer public debt in Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean, and to determine funding requirements;

 Calls on regional and multilateral development banks to help to counter the effects of the crisis in LAC developing countries;

 Asks that the movement of workers among the countries belonging to the Strategic Partnership be facilitated;

As regards renewable energy sources: a sustainable approach to energy security and climate change

 Maintains that energy security has to be one of the priorities underlying the Partnership, implying a need to enhance energy efficiency and diversify energy suppliers and sources;

 Calls for the association agreements between the EU and the different parts of Latin America to include energy cooperation, with particular reference to clean and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and water power, biomass, and sustainably produced biofuels;

 Proposes that common rules on biofuels be laid down with a view to possible future application at world level;

 Urges the Partnership’s citizens and businesses to make greater use of renewable energy sources, taking advantage of legal and tax incentives, and calls for the removal of barriers denying access to the market to producers of electricity generated from renewable sources;

 Points out that the EUrocLIMA programme has been drawn up and urges that it be developed further;

 Reiterates the need to secure a comprehensive global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 in order to limit global warming to levels below 2°C; urges the Partnership’s governments to adopt a common position at the negotiations, proceeding from the principle of ‘shared but differentiated responsibility’, whereby the EU and the industrialised countries would undertake to cut their emissions significantly and the more advanced developing countries would commit themselves to taking mitigation measures for the purposes of sustainable development;

 Considers, given the need for LAC developing countries to reduce emissions and take measures to mitigate, and adapt to, the consequences of climate change, that additional financial resources will have to be mobilised by the United Nations, the EU, and regional and international financial institutions, and, moreover, through public-private partnerships;

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EN  Urges that an additional effort be brought to bear to halt deforestation and suggests that a specific financial instrument be established for the forestry sector;

 Proposes that a regional carbon market be set up by establishing an EU-LAC emissions trading scheme and exploiting the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism, thus providing a precursor to a global carbon market;

 Considers that a Euro-Latin American agreement adopting strict standards for the efficient use of energy to the benefit of our peoples, and conforming to the national laws and international treaties governing each state and to the WTO’s rules, would create a vast market that would automatically be the leader in defining these standards internationally;

 Takes the view that water must be considered a public good, access to which must be guaranteed as a basic human right at fair ‘social and environmental prices’, taking account of the specific situation of each country, as equally to agriculture, in which sector a redoubled technological modernisation effort must be made in order to improve efficiency and put an end to excessive water consumption that has no equivalent in other latitudes;

 Supports the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in their commitment to strengthening cooperation and co-financing of strategic development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, with their special emphasis on renewable energy programmes with positive socio-environmental impact;

 Suggests that the Partnership promote climate diplomacy encompassing matters such as population growth, migration caused by climate change, the exodus towards the cities, energy needs, rising energy prices, and food and water shortages.

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