Heiko Maas, Germany's foreign minister, organized a summit with several of his Latin American peers to discuss the policies to deal with the Coronavirus crisis. At the conference, which was also attended by ECLAC President Alicia Barcena of Mexico, Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Solá thanked them for their support during the debt renegotiation and called for an end to the economic blockade of Cuba and Venezuela imposed by the United States and supported by Europe.

As part of the second "Latin America and Caribbean Initiative" (the first one was organized in Berlin in May 2019), each minister explained how their country was dealing with the economic and health crisis. The German representative promised more aid through multilateral agencies for the region while Europe is concentrating its own resources on the domestic front.

Before the video conference, Maas told EFE that his country's aid to Latin America has doubled, especially to Colombia, Peru, and Chile. He added that he was currently working on an assistance program for Brazil.

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Sources from the Argentine Foreign Ministry explained to LPO that at the diplomatic summit everyone agreed on four points: the socialization of the vaccine against the virus, once it is developed, the importance of providing economic support to SMEs as a mechanism to protect jobs, support for debt reduction in poor countries, and the need to implement direct aid programs for household spending.

Solá used the reference to debt to demand that debt forgiveness be also considered for medium-developed countries such as Argentina. " I think that there is a common understanding about the indebted countries. Argentina is at an extremely high level, an inheritance that our government has received. We are trying to obtain a restructuring based on an honest, serious and sustainable position and we are grateful for the support received for both the IMF debt and the sovereign debt treatment," he said. He also asked to consider the debt situation of medium-developed countries.

Foreign Minister Felipe Solá.

Regarding support for consumer spending, Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, has recommended that a basic emergency income of US$140 per month per resident be implemented for at leats six months to get through the winter. The commission headed by Bárcena has been promoting the creation of an income equivalent to the Latin American market basket. The commission predicts that half of the 60 million new impoverished people left behind by Covid-19 in the world will be in Latin America. Therefore they postulate that in order to curb the growing inequality it is necessary for countries to increase investment in direct social assistance from the current average of 1.3% GDP to 3.4%.

As for the future, participants also discussed how to cooperate in the recovery of world trade. This was an explicit request from Heiko Maas and supported by Bárcena: avoid falling into protectionism in international trade in the post-pandemic era.

"I agree with ECLAC's Alicia Bárcena that the world to come will be regionalized and I believe we must seek to be more united, to have greater levels of cooperation, breaking down internal and external prejudices that might lead us to close down," said the German Foreign Minister.

Felipe Solá and his Mexican counterpart, Marcelo Ebrard, went further in asking for cooperation and said that the economic blockades of Cuba and Venezuela have a political agenda behind them, yet what they do is not sanction the countries, but punish the common people.

"I also agree with my colleague from Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, that it is necessary to guarantee vaccines for everyone, reduce debts, achieve a consensual response to the worst crisis, and avoid sanctions that are based on political interests," he said.

"I also agree with my colleague from Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, that it is necessary to guarantee vaccines for everyone, reduce debts, achieve a consensual response to the worst crisis, and avoid sanctions that are based on political interests," said the Argentine minister, thanking Germany for its interest in rapprochement with the region.

Also participating were Uruguayan Foreign Minister Ernesto Talvi, Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Chilean Foreign Minister Teodoro Ribera Neumann, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rodolfo Solano Quirós and Guatemalan Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo.