The fol­low­ing op-ed is from Eu­ro­pean Union am­bas­sador to T&T, His Ex­cel­len­cy Pe­ter Cavendish, on the 73rd an­niver­sary of Eu­rope Day.

Re­flec­tions on Peace, Pros­per­i­ty and Part­ner­ship – Eu­rope Day 2023

Every year on 9 May, Eu­rope Day cel­e­brates peace and uni­ty in Eu­rope.

It is the an­niver­sary of the "Schu­man De­c­la­ra­tion".

On this day in 1950, Robert Schu­man, then French Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, gave a his­toric speech in which he pro­posed a new form of po­lit­i­cal co­op­er­a­tion for Eu­rope that would make war be­tween the na­tions un­think­able.

This speech is con­sid­ered to be the found­ing text of Eu­ro­pean con­struc­tion.

We sel­dom talk about pol­i­tics as be­ing cre­ative. But this was tru­ly cre­ative and imag­i­na­tive. The Schu­man De­c­la­ra­tion and the sub­se­quent cre­ation of the Eu­ro­pean Union was per­haps the most cre­ative po­lit­i­cal project of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Schu­man and his col­leagues imag­ined it and made it hap­pen. An idea, a vi­sion that de­liv­ered long last­ing peace and pros­per­i­ty, not on­ly on pa­per but in re­al­i­ty.

Fast for­ward to to­day when the EU is one of the world lead­ers and aware of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at the glob­al lev­el to ex­pand that cir­cle of peace and pros­per­i­ty. That the EU is col­lec­tive­ly the biggest donor for in­ter­na­tion­al aid in the world; the first trad­ing part­ner; and the first for­eign in­vestor for many coun­tries in the world, tes­ti­fy to the scope of our glob­al en­gage­ment.

Of course, the EU in­vests in the de­vel­op­ment of this re­gion as well. Near­ly five decades of close part­ner­ship with the Caribbean rests on a sol­id foun­da­tion of shared val­ues, like-mind­ed­ness and co­op­er­a­tion. The Eu­ro­pean Union gave around EUR 150M in grants to the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at and its agen­cies in the pe­ri­od 2014-2020 alone to fur­ther de­vel­op the re­gion.

I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late CARI­COM on its up­com­ing 50th an­niver­sary and wish you much suc­cess on your in­te­gra­tion jour­ney in the com­ing years.

Last Oc­to­ber, lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing 16 Caribbean coun­tries met with the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for In­ter­na­tion­al Part­ner­ships, Jut­ta Urpi­lainen, in Bar­ba­dos and agreed on the main pri­or­i­ties for co­op­er­a­tion un­til 2027.

The end re­sult was the es­tab­lish­ment of three Caribbean-EU Part­ner­ships, which move away from a pure­ly donor-re­cip­i­ent mod­el to a part­ner­ship among equals:

· The Part­ner­ship for a Caribbean Green Deal;

· The Part­ner­ship for Eco­nom­ic Re­silience and Trade; and

· The Part­ner­ship for Gov­er­nance, Se­cu­ri­ty and Hu­man De­vel­op­ment.

These three part­ner­ships form part of the EU’s EUR 300 bil­lion in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment strat­e­gy, Glob­al Gate­way - our of­fer to part­ner coun­tries for sus­tain­able and trust­ed con­nec­tions to help ad­dress the most press­ing glob­al chal­lenges.

As Rus­sia’s ag­gres­sion in Ukraine and the COVID-pan­dem­ic have made these chal­lenges even more acute, we want to help our part­ners to ad­dress them and tack­le in­equal­i­ties. I am pleased to reaf­firm our strong part­ner­ship with the Caribbean with a sol­id con­tri­bu­tion of over €800 mil­lion un­til 2027.

Dig­i­tal is one of our new pil­lars of sup­port with part­ner coun­tries.

In that re­gard, the Eu­ro­pean Union-Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Dig­i­tal Al­liance, launched in March 2023, con­sti­tutes a com­pre­hen­sive po­lit­i­cal and co­op­er­a­tion frame­work for dig­i­tal en­gage­ment with the re­gion.

Spe­cif­ic projects in the field of dig­i­tal in Trinidad and To­ba­go in­clude a Counter Ter­ror­ism Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gramme and al­so a project to ‘Ac­cel­er­ate Dig­i­tal Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion’.

We have been very en­cour­aged by the strong progress of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in ad­vanc­ing its dig­i­tal fi­nance goals. In par­tic­u­lar, the Gov­ern­ment has em­ployed a unique ap­proach to dri­ve its agen­da, with sev­er­al achieve­ments to date since es­tab­lish­ing the agen­da in late 2020.

We are hap­py that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cit­i­zens and in­sti­tu­tions, with whom we have been work­ing di­rect­ly for near­ly 50 years, have had many ad­van­tages from co­op­er­a­tion with the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Cit­i­zens have the ben­e­fit of trav­el­ling to Eu­rope's Schen­gen Zone with­out a visa, of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Eras­mus+ ed­u­ca­tion­al fund­ing pro­gramme to build ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty, in­clud­ing in the dig­i­tal do­main, and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ship (de­vel­op­ment) fund­ing.

Fund­ing is im­por­tant - and we have in­vest­ed more than EUR 300 mil­lion (USD 330 mil­lion) in T&T over the course of 48 years.

EU ex­per­tise and train­ing are al­so avail­able.

Against the back­ground of the re­cent CARI­COM Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium on vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue, I am hap­py to an­nounce that Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the en­tire Caribbean are el­i­gi­ble for the EL PAc­C­TO - Eu­rope Latin Amer­i­ca Pro­gramme of As­sis­tance against Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime – tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance pro­gramme. It is an in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion pro­gramme fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union that seeks to con­tribute to se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice by sup­port­ing the fight against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. In its in­ter­ven­tion, EL PAc­C­TO ad­dress­es the en­tire crim­i­nal chain from an in­te­gral per­spec­tive through work in three com­po­nents: po­lice, jus­tice and pen­i­ten­tiary.

Fur­ther, I must re­fer to the 2008 Eco­nom­ic Part­ner­ship Agree­ment with T&T, un­der which EU com­pa­nies and cit­i­zens have had, and will con­tin­ue to have, the ben­e­fit of orig­i­nal and cre­ative prod­ucts and ser­vices from this par­adise twin-is­land state.

In con­clu­sion, I want to thank the TT au­thor­i­ties once again for their prin­ci­pled stance, from the first day, on the war that Rus­sia launched against Ukraine. Trinidad and To­ba­go has demon­strat­ed its like-mind­ed­ness with an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of coun­tries con­demn­ing Rus­sia’s ag­gres­sion, stand­ing up for in­ter­na­tion­al law and a rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der at the UN.

Thank you for be­ing friends of the Eu­ro­pean Union and Hap­py Eu­rope Day!