Seminar: What Future for Caribbean-EU Relations? Some Reflections on a Challenged Partnership

HE Ambassador Dylan Vernon (Belize ambassador to the EU) - The strong traditional bi-regional ties that the Caribbean and the European Union have maintained will be severely tested in the next five years as both regions pivot to adapt to new regional and global realities. In particular, the European Union is now engaged in critical reviews of its global strategic policies that will certainly have far-reaching consequences for Caribbean-EU relations in areas of political dialogue, trade and development cooperation. I will share my critical reflections on current developments in Brussels on the future of these relations and possible implications for the Caribbean, with a specific focus on independent Caribbean states in CARICOM and CARIFORUM. The key questions I will address include: 

• How important is the Caribbean-EU partnership today?
• Why are Caribbean-EU relations currently being so intensely reviewed and by whom?
• What are the emerging positions in Europe?
• How may the revision of the EU relationship with the African, Caribbean Pacific Group impact on the Caribbean?
• May the Caribbean-EU relationship shift more to the EU’s growing partnership with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States?
• How may a BREXIT affect Caribbean-EU relations?
• How is the Caribbean reacting so far and what are its options?

Dylan Vernon is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Belize to the European Union and the Kingdom of Belgium. Non-Resident Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Representative to the World Trade Organization.

Before taking up post as Ambassador at the Embassy of Belize in Brussels in November 2013, Dylan Vernon completed PhD studies at UCL Institute of the Americas in London. Between 1988 and 2008, he worked with national and international development agencies in Belize, and in the Caribbean and Central America regions. His work highlights include directing the NGO Society for the Promotion of Education and Research, chairing the Belize Political Reform Commission, directing the office of the United Nations Development Programme in Belize, chairing the Belize Advisory Committee on the Guatemalan Claim and moderating the first Prime Ministerial Forum in Belize. He has also been a social policy and governance consultant and lectured at the university level.