(Adnkronos) – Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani was on Wednesday set to speak at a meeting in Spain’s capital, Madrid that will focus on global challenges, defence of the rule of law, cooperation between Europe and Ibero-America, freedom and role of Western democracies, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Heads of government, ministers, political leaders and civil society representatives from Europe and Latin America are guests at the ‘Libertas Forum’, organised by the centre-right European People’s Party and is part of the celebrations marking the EPP’s 50th anniversary, said the statement.
The event will be opened by EPP president Manfred Weber and will bring together over 60 parties from 42 countries across the Euroepan Union, Latin America and the Caribbean, with speakers including Spanish People’s Party president Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the Portuguese premier Luis Montenegro, Peru’s newly elected president Keiko Fujimori, Dominican Republic vice-president Raquel Pena, and Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Vincent Van Peteghem, the statement continued.
The meeting will also be attended by leaders and prominent figures from the democratic opposition movements in Venezuela (Nobel peace prize winner Maria Corina Machado), Cuba (Jose Daniel Ferrer and Rosa Marra Paya) and Nicaragua (Juan Sebastian Chamorro).
On Venezuela, Tajani will underline Italy’s solidarity with the population and the support Rome is providing for the new phase of reconstruction following the deadly earthquakes that struck the south American country on 24 June, highlighting the humanitarian aid already sent and the additional funding allocated to assist people left homeless.
Later on Wednesday, Tajani was set to attend a business forum at the Italian embassy where he will underline that Latin America is one of the priority areas of Italy’s export action plan, with Italian exports to the region topping 20 billion euros in last year, according to the statement.
Accords between the European Union and various countries in Central and Latin America, including the the EU-Mercosur deal which provisionally entered into force on 1 May, have created “significant” trade opportunities, the statement concluded.
