SANTIAGO, Chile – THE head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has called on the region to build a “more symmetrical, balanced and equitable relationship with Europe”.

“We want foreign investment that helps us modernise our production structure, that contributes to employment, that helps us care for the environment and that respects social rights,” said ECLAC’s executive secretary, Alicia Bárcena, in addressing the opening session of the First Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the European Union (CELAC-EU) Academic Summit here on Wednesday.

Bárcena noted that the EU is Latin America and the Caribbean’s main cooperator, largest direct investor and second trading partner.

Over the past decade, she said the EU invested an average US$30 billion per year in Latin America and the Caribbean with foreign direct investment (FDI) amounting to close to US$500 billion.

Bárcena called for European FDI for the region that will promote the transfer of technology, and include production investment that will in turn generate jobs.

However, she expressed concern that the trade relationship between the two regions had stood still in recent years and warned that, by the middle of this decade, China could replace Europe as the region’s second trading partner.

Based on this, Bárcena has called for a bolstering of the “strategic bi-regional partnership”, stating that the “innovation and research and development (R&D) activities of transnational European enterprises have been highly significant in Latin America and the Caribbean”, representing about 64 per cent of all such undertakings.

“These activities are a means of transferring technology and knowledge, increasing local technical capacity, generating spillover productivity effects and creating highly skilled jobs,” she said.

The ECLAC executive secretary noted that most environmental technology patents are in Europe, adding that Latin America and the Caribbean need them “to progress towards sustainable development”.