15/07/2019
30 countries in Latin America and the European Union will reflect on trust as a determining factor in democratic coexistence and social cohesion.
Photograph taken on the first day of the meeting
The main EUROsociAL + project annual meeting was held in Cartagena de Indias to reflect on trust as the key to social cohesion and new cooperation instruments .
The event was coordinated by EUROsociAL+ in collaboration with the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation (APC-Colombia) and the European Union (EU) delegation.
It included the participation of high-level public policy representatives, planning and technical experts from the national institutions of Latin American companies that are collaborating in the programme, and representatives from the EU (delegations in Latin America and EuropeAid).
During the meeting the director of FIIAPP, Anna Terrón, highlighted the importance of governance for more cohesive societies, with strong support from institutions like FIIAPP. For her part, FIIAPP’s general secretary Inma Zamora, highlighted the mobilization of institutional public experience and the quality of policy dialogue as part of the EUROsociAL+ core identity. The president of Colombia, Iván Duque, put the focus on the importance of partnerships in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, while Angela Ospina, director of APC-Colombia, underlined that trust between international cooperation agents is crucial to improving social cohesion in Latin America.
The main focus of the topics being discussed over the four days of the meeting was how to generate greater confidence in the programme’s framework and the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean bi-regional agenda on social cohesion.
The debates have centred on how to cooperate to provide guidance on public social cohesion policies based on closing gaps, encouraging dialogue and building trust; this debate is, in turn, part of the larger ongoing debate on “development in transition” and cooperation with middle-income countries.
EuroSocial+ is a European Union programme of public policies for social cohesion in Latin America that is coordinated by FIIAPP with the collaboration of Expertise France, IILA, SISCA and SICA.
