The chancellor santiago cafiero held a working meeting on Tuesday (25.10.2022) at the San Martín Palace with the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union, Josep Borrell Fontelles, who began his visit to our country with this meeting.
«It allowed a fruitful exchange on some of the main topics of the bilateral agenda and the commitment to deepen the excellent ties and existing cooperation, while offering the opportunity to discuss multilateral issues of mutual interest, the challenges of current global affairs and the integration of our country into European energy autonomy," the Foreign Ministry reported after the meeting.
The ministers stressed the strategic role that food and energy production represents today. The mutual interest It extends to the case of hydrogen, as another energy vector, and to lithium as an input for electromobility.
In these two cases, officials highlighted the role that Argentina can play as a supplier of clean energy, food and strategic minerals and the development of value chains associated with these sectors.
Cafiero and Borrell recalled the broad agenda of cooperation in various fields that include, among many others, joint actions against climate change, gender, human rights, education, culture, digitalization and biotechnology. They also analyzed the main aspects of the recently announced “REPowerEU” plan and highlighted the Memorandum of Understanding between both parties to achieve an energy alliance under the guidelines of green energy and climate change.
After the working meeting, Cafiero and Borrell made a statement to the press.
Cafiero indicated that "the CELAC EU mechanism is very necessary in times of uncertainty, and The relationship between both blocks is presented as strategic; and the same for all the bilateral issues we are developing today: climate change, positions linked to the transfer of technology and the energy transition, and how CELAC together with the EU can develop safe and fair supply chains; that is the challenge we have ahead, to play a role linked to production, to employment, and fundamentally raising this close link of so many years between Argentina and the European Union, where we highlight the investments that are made in our country and also, just to mention one fact, that in these first 9 months of 2022, 12% of our exports go to the European market, so we have a much better future together.
Meanwhile, Borrell said that "We have to strengthen our bilateral relations but also our regional relations. We still have the pending issue of Mercosur, which I still consider to be of strategic importance, and which we must work on, identifying the problems that still exist, seeking solutions to them, in a dialogue such as the one we started this afternoon, understanding the pros and cons of each of the parties.
He also said: "I hope that by the end of the year we can put forward proposals that respond to a joint effort by both regions to confront environmental problems." To conclude, he pointed out that "friendship is not only a memory of what was, but the will to continue building together."
Cafiero and Borrell also referred to the prospects for the III Summit of Ministers of Foreign Affairs CELAC-EU that will take place in Buenos Aires next Thursday 27 - which both will co-chair - and agreed to consider it as a relaunch of the institutionalized bi-regional dialogue within this mechanism. Both blocs had not met since 2018.
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