Global Europe

Latin American leaders have given Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero a short break after what has been undoubtedly his worst week since coming to power six years ago. Immersed in a gloomy collective mood following the announcement of stringent measures to reduce public expenditure and a ballooning deficit, Spaniards witnessed last week the gathering of several Latin American presidents in Madrid for a series of pow-wows, amongst them the EU-Latin America and Caribbean Summit.

Over a period of four days, under the framework of its EU Presidency, Spain organised high-level meetings with Mexico, Chile, Mercosur, Cariforum, the Andean Community, and the Central American countries. Many speak about ‘cumbritis’, the unhealthy excess of cumbres (summits, in Spanish). For those who question the utility of these costly meetings, these various events provided ample material for complaint.

The series of summits was billed as a high point of the Spanish presidency. In light of the collapse of summits with the United States and southern Mediterranean states, their importance rose even further in the eyes of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) administration. The results were not without substance, but as always there was much overblown and vacuous rhetoric. Public opinion appears to have seen through the prime minister’s need for a classic distraction from his domestic woes.

The advances made included trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and the Central American countries, and the re-launching of negotiations with Mercosur, which might result in the creation of a huge free trade zone in the world at both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, just as these talks were reopened a number of member states stated they were opposed to them concluding in a successful free trade deal!

The politics of the summits did not run entirely smoothly. There was much strong arming behind the scenes. In this case, the ‘excuse’ was the presence of the President of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, who was elected after the strange coup-d’etat against former populist president Manuel Zelaya. A number of presidents -- Chávez, Morales, Correa -- said that they would not come to Madrid if Lobo were to attend, in the name of defending Honduran democracy. Given the democratic record of these populist leaders, presumably irony was intended. But president Lula’s threat not to attend was a serious problem -- and one revealing tensions that will exist with this increasingly more active diplomatic player.

In the end, Spain mediated a compromise deal: Lobo arrived only to sign the trade agreement between the EU and the Central American countries, the first to be signed by the Union with another regional entity. And Chávez did not show up at all and was missed mainly by journalists, given the Venezuelan president’s proclivity to make good headlines at such mind-numbingly stale events. All this reflected Europe’s own uncertainty over how to deal with democratic infractions in Latin America.

This time the headlines focused on Argentine president Cristina Kirchner, who met with Baltarsar Garzón, the Spanish judge. Her support and admiration were widely covered by the Spanish press, especially the more right-wing outlets, at the moment when the judge faces a controversial sanctioning of his attempt to delve into crimes committed under the Franco regime. Efforts to block Garzón have done serious damage to Spain’s progressive image in Latin America.

Another argument against these meetings is, again, their excessive number just in the American hemisphere. Mercosur, Unasur, the Summit of the Americas (which include the US and Canada), the recently created Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELC, which does not include the US and Canada), plus the annual Ibero-American Summit, with Spain and Portugal as members of the club. And to top it up, this one with the EU. And yet the meetings that do take place have an uncanny ability to avoid engaging on the most pressing problems. In a week when Brazil reached a controversial agreement with Iran, this issue was conspicuously absent from Spanish and broader European diplomacy at the summits.

It makes sense that Spain aims to put Latin America in the European agenda and to serve as a bridge between both regions. But the priority it attaches to the region is a double-edged sword. The fact that Spain appropriates so much of Latin American policy at the EU level encourages other member states to disengage. Merkel, Cameron and Sarkozy did not attend the Madrid Summit. Spain still feels it gets little backing from other member states in terms of providing development assistance in Latin America.

The spectacle in Madrid last week was that of a very old style European diplomacy:  Spain is ‘given’ Latin America, as the Belgian presidency in the second half of the year has been ‘given’ the summit with sub-Saharan Africa. It is hardly surprising that observers from other regions doubt Europe’s ability to transcend a certain neo-colonial outlook on the world.