ALDE Party Vice President Dita Charanzová MEP participated in the first entirely virtual Congress meeting of the 39 liberal organisations of Latin America (RELIAL) on 29 October where the new challenges for the liberals in the region were discussed as well as challenges in common with Europe.

Charanzová, who is also Vice President of the European Parliament with responsibility for relations with Latin America, addressed the meeting and said: “Since I was elected to the European Parliament in 2014, I have committed to strengthen the links between the EU and Latin America with the purpose of making the EU more present whenever our friends form Latin America are facing difficulties and challenges but also to joint forces.”

“There are many challenges that we are currently facing,” she continued. “It is impossible to ignore the pandemic which is affecting our economies in both sides of the Atlantic. Beyond the crisis, in many countries we are witnessing a major tendency to reduce multilateral cooperation in order to adopt more protectionist and isolationist policies. As liberals, we know that putting walls never works. Now, more than ever, we need liberal values such as openness, cooperation, and free trade to guide our economic recovery and build a better future.”

In the discussion that followed, liberal MEPs Izaskun Bilbao and Jordi Cañas exchanged views with participants on the pandemic and also the agreement between Mercosur and the European Union.

The President of the RELIAL's Board of Directors Bertha Pantoja, emphasised the seriousness of the situation that the COVID-19 pandemic generated in Latin America, underlining that: “states have failed in their first obligation, which is to defend the lives of their citizens […] undoubtedly the worst mistakes made by governments are those that using fear have made against the economy and attacked it. The economic collapse will have worse consequences than the virus."

🌎 "La crisis de la Covid tiene que servirnos para reforzar la integración regional entre Europa y Latinoamérica y forjar una alianza estratégica entre ambas potencias"@jordi_canyas participa en el webinar 'América Latina & Europa: desafíos en común' organizado por @RELIALred pic.twitter.com/6JbrY9vzGo

— Ciudadanos Europa 🇪🇺🇪🇸 (@Cs_Europa) October 29, 2020

You can read more about the RELIAL congress at their website: https://relial.org/articulos/relial-first-virtual-congress-lets-activate-the-future and rewatch here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1282624565449390