From Brussels to Santa Marta, narrow endorsement, broader scope: CELAC–EU commitments in an uncertain global landscape
- Ana Obando and Joaquin Caprarulo
- Dec 7
- 8 min read
After two years since their last meeting, the IV CELAC-EU Summit took place in Santa Marta, Colombia on 9-10 November 2025. Although the summit did not meet initial expectations—particularly when compared to the 2023 edition in Brussels—it marked a number of steps forward in various aspects of the CELAC–EU alliance that merit closer analysis.
Context of the summit and political challenges
In the days following the meeting, most press releases highlighted the low attendance of leaders from both sides, in contrast to the 2023 Summit in Brussels. From the CELAC side, the absences of the presidents of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay—Javier Milei, Gabriel Boric, Daniel Noboa, Santiago Peña and Yumandú Orsi—who were all present at the presidential inauguration of Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz the day before the summit, were particularly notable. These absences contributed to the impression that commitment to the meeting was not strong, prompting a cautious approach to participation.
Some European leaders indeed cited the low attendance of their CELAC counterparts as a justification for missing the summit. For example, the last-minute withdrawal of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the decision of the French President, Emmanuelle Macron, and the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, not to attend fuelled the perception that the summit had failed to meet initial expectations.
Nevertheless, the summit still counted with the participation of key figures from both sides, including Lula Da Silva, president of Brazil; Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs; Antonio Costa, president of the European Council; Dick Schoof, prime minister of the Netherlands; Pedro Sanchez, Prime Minister of Spain; or Luis Montenegro, Primer Minister of Portugal; among others. Moreover, as the EU Ambassador to Colombia, François Roudié, emphasised, although President von der Leyen cancelled her attendance, other high-level representatives—such as Commissioners Teresa Ribera, Hadja Lahbib, and Magnus Brunner, who had not initially been expected— participated, helping to reinforce the European Union’s commitment to the summit.
Despite formal justifications, the diminished attendance to the summit cannot be understood without a direct reference to the geopolitical context in which it has unfolded, particularly the impact of the United States’ foreign policy since the beginning of Trump’s second administration.
To begin with, Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office has significantly shaken the political landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean. His administration has adopted an aggressive foreign policy towards the region, further exacerbating internal divisions among Latin American and Caribbean countries. In what many observers describe as a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, the US is seeking to re-establish political control over the region to dissipate Chinese influence. This strategy has included not only growing military presence and action, as seen with the ongoing airstrikes in the Caribbean, but also direct political intervention to align regional politics more closely to US interests. Some of Trump’s most contentious decisions - including sanctions for alleged drug trafficking against Gustavo Petro, the imposition of 50% unilateral tariffs on Brazilian exports under Lula’s government or the unprecedented financial bailout extended to Milei’s Argentina-, should be read as manifestations of a zero-sum approach to regional engagement: those aligned with Washington reap the benefits, while others face escalating pressure.
These developments have further deepened divisions within the already fragile politics of integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. For some US-aligned leaders, taking part in the summit risked being interpreted as an endorsement of a regional vision associated with left-leaning governments and anti-American discourse —an impression likely reinforced by the rhetoric of Gustavo Petro, the current pro tempore president of the CELAC responsible for organising the summit.
Across the Atlantic, Trump's second administration came along with a major revision of the terms governing the US–EU relationship, largely in response to EU regulatory frameworks perceived to undermine the competitiveness of US companies. This entailed a reformulation of longstanding bilateral agreements in key domains - including security, trade, technology or foreign policy. The resulting crisis has generated uncertainty and confusion among EU leaders, leading to avoid open confrontation with the US for fear of arbitrary reprisals. Their approach to Latin America and the Caribbean is thus not immune to this broader climate of hesitation and strategic restraint.
However, the success of the summit should not be solely measured against the benchmark of the level of participants. The fact that the Summit has taken place in such a turbulent political context is a sign of the resilience of the bi-regional partnership. Moreover, the content of the final declaration offers grounds for constructive prospects, outlining a promising roadmap for cooperation over the next two years and reaffirming the commitment to reconvene in Brussels in 2027.
The outcome of the Summit: fragmentation, steps forward and sources for optimism
The 2025 CELAC-EU Summit held in Santa Marta represents an evolution in the bi-regional agenda. While the 2023 Brussels Summit reactivated political dialogue after an eight-year hiatus, the Santa Marta Declaration brought greater scope and ambition—albeit amid growing political divergence within CELAC. In what follows, we present seven points of analysis on key aspects of the outcome of the Summit, including the content of the Declaration, the Pact on Care and the EU-LAC Alliance for Citizen Security, and the Civil Society and Business Forum. At the end, we also provide a comparative chart between the 2023 and the 2025 Declarations.
1. From reconnection to political positioning
The 2023 Brussels Declaration's focused on “relaunching” relations, while the Santa Marta one reflects a clear shift towards improving geopolitical alignment. The tone is more assertively political, placing the bi-regional relationship within the context of an international system under strain. Both sides reaffirmed the "strategic importance" of their partnership—not simply as a matter of mutual interest, but as a safeguard against unilateralism, fragmentation of multilateral governance and in defence of a rules-based international order.
2. Expanded agenda, strategic silences
Substantively, the 2025 Declaration is broader than its 2023 predecessor. It introduces new domains such as artificial intelligence, care systems, disinformation, and digital governance. It also confirms and expands on earlier commitments with greater operational specificity (e.g. on energy transition and connectivity, and food security). Yet, this expansion coexists with notable silences. The omission of historical references to slavery and reparations (present in 2023) signals a diplomatic balancing act, likely reflecting European preferences. Also, the absence of the Mercosur agreement suggests that internal divergences on the EU side remain unresolved.
3. Global crisis, fragmentation and the obstacles for consensus
The Santa Marta Declaration addresses a broader spectrum of global crises than its 2023 predecessor. It maintains reference to Ukraine; introduces Gaza, expands on Haiti with operational references to the United Nations Security Council frameworks, and alludes -in deliberately vague terms- to the 2025 U.S. strikes against suspected drug-trafficking operations near Colombia and Venezuela, referring to them only as the “Caribbean situation”.
However, a group of CELAC states formally dissociated from these specific paragraphs, including those related to digital regulation, gender, and even the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Venezuela withdrew entirely and Nicaragua did not appear as signatory nor dissociating totally or partially from the declaration, but addressed a letter rejecting it.
This level of misalignment weakens the declaratory force of the summit and underscores the growing challenges of consensus-based regionalism within CELAC. For the EU, this fragmentation complicates efforts to project the partnership as a unified geopolitical actor, and further accentuates the institutional asymmetries between the two regions.
4. Normative convergence and legal anchoring
One of the most meaningful advances lies in moving forward of a relationship based on the historical ties and focusing on the shared values. While 2023 spoke of “resilient, inclusive and democratic societies,” the 2025 text explicitly links these principles to international legal frameworks—citing the UN Charter, the Vienna Conventions, and principles such as sovereign equality of States and non-use of force. In an era of contested multilateralism, this legal anchoring enhances the normative coherence of the partnership, even as divergences persist on specific topics.
5. Global Gateway
The Global Gateway Investment Agenda -the EU’s flagship strategy for development cooperation-, was mentioned four times in the Santa Marta Declaration (paragraphs 29, 33, 35 and 43). The areas of cooperation identified under this framework include trade, the green and digital transitions, human development, health resilience and vaccine access. Projects such as the high-performance computing network and the last kilometre satellite connectivity were specially referenced. Notably, at both the Civil Society Forum and the Business Forum, the Global Gateway featured not only in investment-related panels but also in discussions on natural disaster response, crisis management, and humanitarian aid. This suggests that future cooperation between the two regions is likely to rely heavily on this EU-led framework.
6. Care and Citizen Security as emerging fields of cooperation
Two new bi-regional fields of cooperation were adopted as corollaries of the Summit:
The EU–LAC Pact on Care, signed by the EU and 16 CELAC members, mainstreams care work into the bi-regional agenda. Despite numerous voices noting its limited ambition compared to initial proposals, the Pact marks an institutional entry point for cooperation addressing gendered social inequalities and the crisis of social security services in aging societies.
The EU–LAC Alliance for Citizen Security, endorsed by the EU and 18 CELAC states, offers a law and human rights-based alternative to militarised approaches to regional security. It signals a shared interest in cooperative enforcement mechanisms and could shape future security architectures.
7. Civil Society and representation gaps
Institutionally, the 2025 summit saw the first time the civil society actors were allowed to read their declaration at the closing session of the Summit -hence directly delivering their message to both regions' leaders. However, the Civil Society Forum call for participation was convened at very short notice: the agenda was only shared at the end of September, and confirmation of selected organisations came in the second half of October—less than a month before the summit. The asymmetry in access and influence remains a structural challenge, particularly for underrepresented groups from smaller and vulnerable states. In contrast to the LAC-EU Business Forum, the Civil Society Forum attracted fewer high-profile participants, further reinforcing its peripheral position in the summit’s broader institutional architecture.
To conclude, while the Santa Marta Summit fell short of the political symbolism achieved in Brussels in 2023, the outcomes appear less as a step backward but rather a complex recalibration narrower in endorsement, but broader and more operational in ambition. As the 2025 Santa Marta declaration highlights in paragraphs 3 and 52, the Ministerial meetings and the CELAC-EU consultative coordination mechanism will be important to ensure continuity and follow-up on the roadmap for the next two years. Although the Roadmap for 2025-2027 has not yet been published, both regions are already committed to holding the next summit in Brussels in two years’ time; a development that signals a shared interest in sustaining the momentum of the CELAC–EU partnership.
A comparative table of the 2023 and 2025 CELAC–EU Summit declarations is provided below to support further analysis:
Ana Obando is a PhD researcher in International Law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies (KU Leuven - Belgium). She is conducting her research with the support of a MSCA scholarship as part of the project ‘Understanding Latin American Challenges in the 21st Century / LAC-EU’. Her areas of interest are International Trade Law, Labour Law and LAC-EU relations. She is a lawyer with a minor on Government and Public Affairs from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) and holds an LLM and a Master with honors from the Sorbonne University (France).
Joaquin Caprarulo is a PhD researcher in International Law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies (KU Leuven - Belgium). He is conducting his research with the support of a MSCA scholarship as part of the project ‘Understanding Latin American Challenges in the 21st Century / LAC-EU’. His areas of interest are public international law, the international law of human rights, the work of international organizations and LAC-EU relations. He holds an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK) as a Chevening scholarship recipient, and he is a graduated lawyer from Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina).
The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the EULAS Network.
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