EU – CELAC Local Governments Forum
This is why the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and the Barcelona Provincial Council (Diputació de Barcelona), under the auspices of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and in collaboration with the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), Mercociudades and UCCI, are organising the EU-CELAC Local Government Forum. With the support of PLATFOMRMA, FIIAPP, Casa América Cataluña, VNG International, UCLG CIB Working Group, UCLG and CIDEU.
The main objective is to situate local governments of both regions in the renewed strategy that emerged from the Summit of Heads of State and Government last July, to present to the different actors of the two regions the role that local governments can and should play in the development of this strategy, and to identify the added value for the states of both regions of the cooperation between their local governments.
On 17 and 18 July 2023, the Summit of Heads of State and Government of the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States took place in Brussels for the first time in eight years.
The Summit was preceded by the « Civil Society, Local Authorities and Youth Forum » (Brussels, 13-14 July) which noted the decreasing role of local governments in the bi-regional dialogue and in the implementation of the renewed strategy to strengthen the EU’s partnership with Latin America and the Caribbean, which should finally take shape in the different territories.