Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

The Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) will con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er with its part­ners in the Caribbean to ad­dress is­sues re­lat­ing to cli­mate change, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and the fight against transna­tion­al crime, Charge d'Af­faires of T&T's EU Del­e­ga­tion, Daniela Tra­macere, says.She made the com­ment dur­ing an EU re­cep­tion in cel­e­bra­tion of Eu­rope Day (May 9) in the Casablan­ca Ball­room at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day.

Dur­ing her ad­dress, Tra­macere said the EU has en­abled its cit­i­zens to at­tain un­prece­dent­ed stan­dards of liv­ing and pros­per­i­ty, in which shared prob­lems have led to col­lec­tive so­lu­tions.

"With the Caribbean, we have been build­ing on our his­tor­i­cal her­itage and our aim is to har­ness an al­ready strong and ma­ture po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship based on mu­tu­al in­ter­est in a rapid­ly glob­al­is­ing world," she said. Tra­macere said the fight against transna­tion­al crime was an area of com­mon in­ter­est be­tween the EU and the Caribbean, adding that its col­lat­er­al ef­fects were caus­ing "sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties in both sub­re­gions."

She said the EU, along with its mem­ber states, was the largest donor of de­vel­op­men­tal aid, pro­vid­ing more than 60 per cent of the to­tal over­seas de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance. In T&T, she said, the EU's com­mit­ted grants have sur­passed more than 100 mil­lion eu­ros over the last five years.Tra­macere said de­spite the fi­nan­cial con­straints in Eu­rope at present, the EU was com­mit­ted to part­ner­ing with T&T be­cause the two shared sim­i­lar val­ues and in­ter­ests.

"We have an in­ter­est in T&T to have a com­pet­i­tive, open, trans­par­ent econ­o­my and trans­par­ent gov­er­nance, be­cause these are the ba­sis for in­vest­ments to grow and for a part­ner­ship to flour­ish," she said.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an con­grat­u­lat­ed the EU on hav­ing been award­ed the No­bel Peace Prize late last year for the pro­mo­tion of peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for over six decades. He said the in­te­gra­tion move­ment in Eu­rope had pro­vid­ed an im­pe­tus for the Caribbean re­gion, as it cur­rent­ly aims to es­tab­lish a con­ver­gence "that em­braces the many lan­guages, cul­tures and her­itages of the re­gion."

Dook­er­an re­called that af­ter T&T ob­tained in­de­pen­dence in 1962, many of the lead­ing coun­tries of Eu­rope had ac­knowl­edged this ma­jor step and es­tab­lished re­la­tions in Port-of-Spain."Since then we have seen the grow­ing and deep­en­ing re­la­tion­ship over the years on sev­er­al fronts, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion, en­er­gy, cul­ture, tourism, heath and se­cu­ri­ty," he said.