By: Antonio Costa
November 14, 2025
It is a great honour to open, together with President Petro, this fourth summit between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union. I would like to thank President Petro and Colombia for hosting this summit in this beautiful city of Santa Marta.
I will begin by welcoming the delegates from the 60 countries and the international organisations here today, and by expressing my solidarity with the countries worst affected by Hurricane Melissa, which caused so much destruction as it passed over the Caribbean.
In our multipolar world, bi-regional cooperation between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean is more important than ever. The truth is that I have never seen, during my long political career, so many exchanges between our two regions. After the summit in 2015, it took us eight years to hold another one. Now it has been just two years since the last one, in Brussels in 2023. Since that last summit we have increased our contacts at all levels, with more than 60 high-level visits between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean.
We have held ministerial meetings, and we have met in sub-regional and bilateral formats. During the last United Nations General Assembly alone, our foreign affairs ministers met twice in New York. We have thus strengthened our cooperation on energy, climate resilience, digitalisation, the fight against organised crime and drug trafficking, and also health.
Our trade has also increased over recent years: by more than 45 % since 2013. We are expanding our network of trade agreements as never before, covering almost all of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The European Union is also the top foreign investor in the region, with over €800 billion in direct investments.
Since its inception, the European Union’s investment programme, Global Gateway, has already mobilised over €31 billion to boost the green, digital and social transitions. More than 100 specific projects are now under way. We are investing in promoting regional electricity interconnections, moving forward on digital connectivity, particularly via satellite in remote areas, facilitating access to supercomputers for the development of artificial intelligence, developing the sargassum value chain in the Caribbean, strengthening local vaccine and medicine production capacities, and speeding up our partnerships on critical raw materials in the region in a clean and sustainable way. We are also investing in preparing for, and better tackling, extreme weather events.
However, apart from all of these investments that give life to our relationship, there is also the human factor, of course: exchanges and contacts between millions of our citizens, who benefit from shared languages, cultures and values. Human contacts that give real meaning to our relationship.
We are meeting here today with one single purpose: to strengthen and enrich this cooperation. To make our natural connection even stronger. To increase the complementarities between us and overcome our differences. So that we can grow together and protect each other in a world that is increasingly unstable and volatile.
We must do this. And we must do it together. Because we are stronger together.
The dangers of the current era are out there. We are surrounded by them. We live in an era of competition between global players, changing alliances and economic pressures. We can see the threats posed by climate change, such as extreme weather events, including the most recent and destructive, Hurricane Melissa. Threats to democracy from authoritarianism, growing inequality, and violations of the rule of law and of fundamental human rights. Threats to international law and the core values of the United Nations Charter, such as sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Faced with all of this, we must work together, we must talk about everything and find a joint response.
That is why we are here. I would like to thank our teams, who have worked very hard over the last few weeks to enable countries with very different ideological positions to sit here together and reach a common position on critical global issues. What we are telling the world is that, despite all of our differences, together, within the multilateral framework, by talking to each other and by listening to each other, we have been able to reach a common position.
500 years ago, when this city of Santa Marta was founded, a new era was also being built. It was an era marked by conflict, fragmentation and division, when the course of history was dictated by force.
We are meeting here today in Santa Marta to send the entirely opposite message. We are choosing dialogue rather than division. We are choosing cooperation rather than confrontation. We are choosing partnership rather than isolation.
And in this multipolar world of ours, what is needed is a multilateral response. We can only build the future if we do so together. The future must belong to all of us, or it will belong to nobody.
Thank you very much.
(The author is a Portuguese lawyer and politician who has served as President of the European Council since 2024. He previously served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 2015 to 2024 and Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 2014 to 2024.)
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