Thank you very much, Ralph,
Thank you very much, Charles,
Indeed, it was an excellent Summit. It really felt like a new beginning for old friends. We need each other. These are times of great geopolitical change. And like-minded friends like us need to stand together. We had good deliverables. I want to focus on the part of deliverables that are for our people and for our businesses. On the first day, we launched the Global Gateway Investment Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean. We will bring over EUR 45 billion of high-quality European investment to Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 135 projects are already in the pipeline – so it is a very good start.
Now of course, we have to shape the Investment Agenda together, and we have to decide which sectors and which value chains to prioritise. And then, we have to implement and deliver. The range of projects is very wide. It goes from clean hydrogen to critical raw materials, from data cable networks to mRNA vaccines. Important is that – and we discussed that a lot – Global Gateway is not just about how much we are investing but also about how we are investing. We want that our investments come with the highest environmental and social standards, with transparency about what is happening; we want to share technology and knowledge; and the training of local workforce for the jobs of the future is one of the core elements. In this investment, it is important for us – and this is what makes it different – that the local communities benefit from the value chains and the added value produced there. This is also in our interest because we want reliable and trustworthy suppliers.
This is also the spirit of the bilateral agreements that we concluded at this Summit. First, we signed a critical raw materials agreement with Chile. And we also signed two MoUs on energy, one with Argentina and one with Uruguay. They are both on green energy, in particular on hydrogen – so truly a win-win for both regions and both continents.
My second point is on the trade agreements. I am very confident, especially after these two days, that in the coming months we will be able to wrap up the negotiations with Mercosur. Our ambition is to settle any remaining differences as soon as possible and to conclude it at the latest by the end of this year. I am also confident that we will conclude the negotiations on the modernised EU-Mexico agreement in the following months. I also strongly welcome the good news on the post-Cotonou agreement. We finally made it. There were a lot of negotiations but now we found agreement among Member States, and we will manage to sign it soon.
My final point is on the global impact of Russia's war against Ukraine. I am deeply concerned about Russia's move to terminate the Black Sea Grain Initiative, despite the efforts of the United Nations and Türkiye. The risk is that it brings food insecurity to so many vulnerable countries across the globe. The European Union will, with all means, continue to work to ensure that food security for vulnerable people is given. As you know, we have, as a complementary initiative, the solidarity lanes. More than 45 million tonnes of grain, oilseed and other products have been exported via the solidarity lanes. The Black Sea Grain Initiative added another 35 million tonnes. So we will for sure continue bringing agri-food products out of Ukraine to the global markets via the solidarity lanes. But it is important that the blocking of the Black Sea is stopped and that the exports via the Black Sea can keep on going.
We of course discussed a lot the fact that everybody wants this war to end, and that peace needs to be just and enduring, and at the core should be the UN Charter. We explicitly discussed the importance of the UN Charter. It is the common ground for us. It is there for every single country, with the international law. And it is in all our interest to be very strong on protecting the international law and protecting the UN Charter. In this spirit, we have discussed – and it was, as I said, an excellent beginning for new friends – to have a new tradition every two years to meet with the CELAC.
