During the last Summit, the Heads of State agreed to entrust the then President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, with the responsibility of drafting a Report, now known as the Cardoso Report, with recommendations for increasing cohesion within the group and raising the Iberoamerican profile in the international context.

With the blurring of the paradigms of the cold war, there was reason to harbour hope for a new and strengthened multilateralism based on what Cardoso calls ”the diplomacy of variable geometries”, which would allow alliances in pursuit of concrete and transcendental interests instead of successive and automatic reactive (not to say reactionary) coalitions. The Iberoamerican Summit represented the most vivid example of a community of countries, which, although they share undeniable historical ties, also represent a melting pot of races, cultures and interests, joined together by a remarkable sense of tolerance and pluralism among countries with highly diverse levels of economic development.

One of the most outstanding decisions of the Summit has been the creation of a permanent Secretariat, called upon to provide continuity to the initiatives of member countries. Among the issues that stand to benefit from the negotiations held during the Summits and from the work of the new Secretariat, there are two that come to mind given their immediate relevance. Firstly, Spain and Portugal have agreed during the Summit to convey to the European Union the deep concern of Latin American countries over the problem of subsidies for the production and export of agricultural and agro-industrial products in importer countries, so that they could be considered during the negotiations of the Doha Round. Secondly, the Cardoso Report proposes that the future Secretariat establish a support unit for Governments in their relations with risk evaluation agencies. It proposes that governments should seek to harmonise national criteria and rules regarding the activities of the agencies and promote discussion within the United Nations, of an international code of conduct for these agencies. These have become a true bane for developing countries when they cavalierly classify country risk based on inaccurate or subjective criteria or according to outdated statistics.

So, what is the significance of this supra regional body for our Greater Caribbean? It means that now, Latin American and Luso American countries also have a direct communication channel with the most important trade and political bloc in the world. In what is still the recent past, there would have been talk of this being the Latin American “counterweight” to CARICOM in its dealings with the EU. Today, with the experiences in Monterrey and Cancun, we can hope that the countries of the English speaking Caribbean and those of the Spanish speaking Caribbean, will have the wisdom to recognise the opportunity afforded them by a double access to Europe, toward a common agenda.

Luis Carpio is the Political Adviser of the Association of Caribbean States. The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Feedback can be sent to mail@acs-aec.org

November 17, 2003