Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a mem­ber of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic States (OACPS), has fur­ther strength­ened its ties with the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) by sign­ing on to a new part­ner­ship agree­ment known as “the Samoa Agree­ment”.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs re­ports that on Ju­ly 29, 2024, His Ex­cel­len­cy Col­in Con­nel­ly, Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­naire and Plenipo­ten­tiary of the Em­bassy of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to King­dom of Bel­gium and rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Eu­ro­pean Union, signed the Samoa Agree­ment on be­half of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has now joined the 27 EU Mem­ber States and 74 OACPS that have signed the Samoa Agree­ment,” the Min­istry re­ports, “which was first opened for sig­na­ture in Apia, In­de­pen­dent State of Samoa, on 15 No­vem­ber 2023.”

“Four OACPS Mem­bers have not yet signed the Agree­ment,” the Min­istry not­ed.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, ob­served that the agree­ment makes a new stage in this coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with the EU.

“The Samoa Agree­ment is an­oth­er means of strength­en­ing the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al re­la­tions which ex­ist be­tween the Mem­ber States of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of African, Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic States and Eu­ro­pean Union,” Min­is­ter Browne stat­ed.

He added: “It will al­so strength­en part­ner­ship to gen­er­ate mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial out­comes.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s state­ment, at the time of sign­ing the Samoa Agree­ment, an In­ter­pre­ta­tive De­c­la­ra­tion was is­sued, which clar­i­fies the mean­ing, scope and pa­ra­me­ters for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Agree­ment, from the per­spec­tive of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The Samoa Agree­ment will be in­ter­pret­ed and im­ple­ment­ed by Trinidad and To­ba­go in a man­ner con­sis­tent with its do­mes­tic le­gal and pol­i­cy frame­works,” the Min­istry’s state­ment ex­plained, “and is com­ple­men­tary to and does not su­per­sede in­stru­ments of in­ter­na­tion­al law to which this coun­try is par­ty or sig­na­to­ry.”

The Samoa Agree­ment suc­ceed­ed the Coto­nou Agree­ment, which gov­erned EU-ACP re­la­tions for sev­er­al decades.  The new agree­ment has for­mal­ized a re­newed part­ner­ship be­tween the two en­ti­ties, paving the way for strength­ened col­lab­o­ra­tion on a range of crit­i­cal is­sues, in­clud­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, cli­mate change, hu­man rights, and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance.