11/07/2014
EUROsociAL, the financed by the European Commission and FIIAPP-led cooperation programme, closed its second programme meeting yesterday in Antigua (Guatemala), from which important conclusions were drawn after four days of debate and Euro-Latin American dialogue.
Dora Coc, of the Guatemala’s Secretariat-General for Planning, highlighted the contribution of EUROsociAL “to the collective construction of greater equality in the region”. For his part, Florian Lütticken, of the Directorate-General for Cooperation of the European Commission, expressed that this is the European programme that mobilizes the most South-South and triangular cooperation in Latin America.
This meeting was arranged to coincide with five thematic seminars on the main areas of the programme. Thus, 200 participants from over 20 Latin American and European countries discussed, as a group and at times transversally, the public policies aimed at promoting social cohesion in their countries, especially those related to the fight against poverty, with the quality of public spending as the chosen common theme.
Out of this rich debate, diverse conclusions were drawn that can be applied to this and other international cooperation programmes for development. Different themes such as justice, finance, equality, corruption, etc., which Jesús Ruiz-Huerta, Professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid, went over with quality of spending as a cross-cutting perspective, and from which he shared interesting views such as “transparency serves to let people see what is done, and visibility is to show what is being done”.
Without a doubt, the Spanish Cooperating Training Centre in Antigua was the ideal scenario for reinforcing the relations of cooperation between the European Union and Latin America, and for advancing along a path to be laid out by the EU-CELAC Summits.
Click here for more information about the meeting/ Watch a video of the closing ceremony
