Remarks by HR/VP Josep Borrell upon arrival at the Foreign Affairs Council

13.07.2020
Brussels

Check against delivery!Good morning,I am looking forward to seeing the Ministers [of Foreign Affairs of the European Union] in person after a long [period of] videoconference meetings and it is going to be important to be all together here in person because we have important issues to discuss.The first issue will be Latin America. I always say that Latin America is not enough on the radar of the European Foreign Affairs policy. We have to put [Latin] America in our minds because first of all they are suffering an important problem with the coronavirus and secondly because we have to strengthen our relations from many points of view including the political point of view. We will study how we can engage more with Latin America.We are also going to talk about Turkey, which is the most important item in the agenda today. You know that our relationship with Turkey is not especially good at the moment and I think it is going to be an interesting discussion on how to address this important issue.And then in current issues we have a lot of things to talk about, there is the situation in Libya, in Venezuela and Africa.And I will brief the ministers on the results of the first meeting of the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue [since November 2018]. It is important to stress that the Dialogue is again on track, that we have started. The European Union Special Representative, Mr [Miroslav] Lajčák has done good work. We are sitting at the table together. We will meet again on Thursday and I hope it is going to be an important step forward towards the normalisation of the relationship between Pristina and Belgrade.And last but not least, we are going to study the situation in Hong Kong. The law passed by the Chinese authorities is more draconian than expected and the Member States will present their position and their concerns about the situation there.

Thank you.Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-193153

Peter Stano
Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
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Nabila Massrali
Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
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