Italian ECR MEP and Vice-President of the EuroLat Parliamentary Assembly, Carlo Fidanza, and Spanish ECR MEP Nora Junco Garcia, call for closer relations between the European Union and Central America to tackle global organised crime and the growing influence of China in the region.

At the constitutive session of the EU–Central America Association Parliamentary Committee (APC) in San José on Monday, Fidanza and Junco emphasised the region’s geopolitical significance. “Central America is pivotal in geopolitical terms, with growing Chinese influence, and the West must offer an alternative to this,” Fidanza stated.

“We must strengthen trade cooperation, which has worked well over the past eleven years, and make better use of the resources the EU spends on cooperation through the Global Gateway,” Junco added.

“Above all, we must improve global coordination against organised crime. Central America is a hub for the massive trafficking of drugs, weapons, and human beings, and increasingly structured criminal gangs are merging with other European mafias,” Fidanza said.

Junco called for successful practices to be shared at a global level:

“Alongside local solutions such as the ‘Bukele model’, which has eradicated crime in El Salvador, we need to promote the exchange of good practices between EU and Central American countries. We should also consider extending the European Ports Alliance to include ports in Central America,” she said.

In conclusion, Fidanza and Junco emphasised the importance of political pressure in defending democratic values in Nicaragua:

“We must never stop exerting strong political pressure in favour of freedom, democracy, and human rights — starting with Nicaragua, which is ruled by the brutal Ortega-Murillo regime. It is no coincidence that its representatives did not participate in the work of the new Parliamentary Committee”, Fidanza concluded.