Remarks by President Donald Tusk at the press conference of the EU-CELAC summit

Good afternoon. We have just concluded our second EU-CELAC summit. Let me first thank all the heads of state and government who attended. The high rate of participation from both sides of the Atlantic is a sign of the importance we attach to our partnership. And I also want to thank President Correa, who has co-chaired with me. I think it is a great sign of the vitality of this relationship that this summit was also accompanied by a number of parallel events, organised and promoted by civil society, academics, businesspeople, trade unions, youth and parliamentarians. This partnership is not just a political one: it is much more than that.

The European Union and CELAC jointly account for one third of the world's countries. Together we can have a decisive impact on - just to bring a few examples - the global climate talks, the post-2015 development agenda and the fight against drugs. That is why we need to keep talking, keep getting closer together on the issues and aligning our approaches. That is why the European Union and the CELAC countries intend to take forward our political dialogue from here. From now on, we have decided that our foreign ministers will meet between summits to ensure swift follow up of decisions made by leaders. And they will bring forward recommendations for how we deepen the relationship and how we can work together more substantively.

To give you one example: climate change matters to us both: Latin American and Caribbean countries are very vulnerable to this threat. That's one reason that the Paris talks later this year have to succeed and why the EU will continue providing support to the region through its EUROCLIMA programme.

We also discussed international and regional security. Chile and Colombia have already signed agreements with the EU to participate in crisis management operations and we welcome other interested countries in the region to talk to us about this as well. The European Union supports the peace negotiations in Colombia and will back a future peace deal through the creation of an EU trust fund to support peace implementation. We are also supporting the process of modernisation in Cuba, which we hope will be reinforced when we finish talks on our Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement. I warmly welcome the steps towards full normalisation of the relations between Cuba and the United States.

The visa waiver agreements recently signed with five Caribbean States and just initialed with Colombia and Peru show our eagerness to bring our peoples closer together. After the entry into force of these agreements, more than 80 per cent of citizens in the CELAC region will be able to enter the Schengen area without a visa. These openings are possible thanks to the good cooperation we have on security of documents and immigration. We will continue developing this in the weeks and months ahead.

The CELAC region is very large and very diverse. For our partnership to be fully effective, we need to pay attention to sub-regional issues too. Today, we will hold two high-level meetings, one with the Heads of state and government of Central America and the other with the Heads of state and government of the Caribbean countries.

Finally, and importantly,  just before the summit, we initialed an agreement that will transform the EU-LAC Foundation into an international body, so that it can expand its work in promoting our partnership to our citizens. The EU will also continue its financial support to the Foundation, with €3 million over the next two years. Latin America and the Caribbean have become more prosperous and more confident and CELAC embodies the region's ambition to achieve closer integration - this is something we have strongly supported from the very beginning.

We can now confidently say - I am sure that President Correa agrees - that we are building a partnership of equals, based on mutual benefit and mutual respect. The direct fibre-optic cable that we agreed to build between our two continents is perhaps a simple but nonetheless strong symbol of our ever closer connection.