DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Cé­cile Tassin, is ad­vo­cat­ing for greater use of con­fi­den­tial di­a­logue to help the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) re­solve in­ter­nal dis­agree­ments, as ten­sions per­sist with­in the re­gion­al bloc over the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

Tassin, a vet­er­an diplo­mat with more than three decades of ex­pe­ri­ence, as­sumed her first am­bas­sado­r­i­al post­ing last Oc­to­ber.

Her tenure be­gins at a time when re­la­tions be­tween T&T and oth­er Cari­com mem­ber states have come un­der strain.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, she point­ed to the Eu­ro­pean Union’s own mod­el of de­ci­sion-mak­ing, where dis­putes are typ­i­cal­ly ad­dressed at the tech­ni­cal lev­el be­fore reach­ing po­lit­i­cal lead­ers. She sug­gest­ed that this kind of prepa­ra­tion al­lows for smoother out­comes at the high­est lev­els of gov­er­nance.

“Usu­al­ly, when the meet­ing be­tween heads of state hap­pens in Eu­rope, every­thing has been pre­pared in ad­vance. First, we have all the am­bas­sadors, what we call the per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mem­ber states. And ac­tu­al­ly, even be­fore the am­bas­sadors, you have all the ex­perts who come from Eu­rope, then the am­bas­sadors, then you have the min­is­ters.”

“So nor­mal­ly when it reach­es the heads of state, of course, they can still take de­ci­sions, but nor­mal­ly all the dis­agree­ments have been re­al­ly dealt with. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's what is miss­ing a bit, to pre­pare well and solve the dis­agree­ments be­tween (be­fore) it reach­es the high­est lev­el.”

While Tassin, who is French with African roots, ac­knowl­edged that the EU is not im­mune to se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, she in­sists that strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty re­mains the bedrock of suc­cess­ful diplo­mat­ic ne­go­ti­a­tion.

“Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is very im­por­tant. We had the prob­lem in Eu­rope re­cent­ly when we dis­cov­ered that the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs of Hun­gary was com­mu­ni­cat­ing with his col­league in Rus­sia,” she added.

Tassin al­so wel­comed T&T’s re­cent re­moval from the EU’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions, de­scrib­ing it as a pos­i­tive step in strength­en­ing re­la­tions.

She fur­ther said T&T is not fac­ing any spe­cif­ic risks of bor­der re­stric­tions or lim­its on move­ment in­to EU mem­ber states, not­ing that the bloc main­tains pro­tec­tions for mi­grants and asy­lum seek­ers.

She added that there is sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for de­vel­op­ment, en­cour­ag­ing a stronger fo­cus on sus­tain­able tourism.

Tassin point­ed to the coun­try’s nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment—in­clud­ing its wildlife, land­scapes, birds and tur­tle pop­u­la­tions in To­ba­go—as key as­sets that could be fur­ther de­vel­oped in a sus­tain­able way.

While she de­clined to com­ment on do­mes­tic po­lit­i­cal mat­ters, she not­ed that cam­paign fi­nance re­form has pro­duced pos­i­tive out­comes in EU coun­tries, sug­gest­ing there may be lessons for oth­er re­gions.

“In gen­er­al, it's al­ways good to look at good ex­am­ples in the world. And we do it in many sec­tors. We are open to pro­vide, if re­quest­ed, to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, to pro­vide ex­perts.”

The am­bas­sador framed the EU as a “like-mind­ed” part­ner in what she de­scribed as an in­creas­ing­ly frag­ment­ed glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, push­ing back against per­cep­tions that the Caribbean is be­ing side­lined amid ma­jor geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts. She al­so point­ed to con­flicts in the Mid­dle East as ac­cel­er­at­ing the push to­wards de­car­bon­i­sa­tion, not­ing their in­flu­ence on T&T’s evolv­ing en­er­gy out­look.

More­over, Tassin said se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion re­mains a cen­tral pil­lar of the EU-TT part­ner­ship.

The EU has ex­pand­ed its en­gage­ment in the re­gion through train­ing and in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing ini­tia­tives with Cari­com IM­PACS, aimed at ad­dress­ing transna­tion­al threats.

How­ev­er, the am­bas­sador em­pha­sised that the EU’s sup­port is ac­com­pa­nied by strict over­sight.

The bloc main­tains an in­de­pen­dent au­dit­ing sys­tem and has, in some cas­es, sought re­im­burse­ment for projects that did not meet agreed stan­dards.

Look­ing ahead, she is call­ing for a re­set of for­mal po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue un­der the Samoa Agree­ment. Al­though an­nu­al part­ner­ship meet­ings are man­dat­ed, they have not been held in T&T for sev­er­al years.

Tassin said she in­tends to bridge that gap be­fore the end of the year, with dis­cus­sions ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on ar­eas such as dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and trade.

The EU is set to mark 51 years of re­la­tions with T&T in May, with a se­ries of events in­clud­ing the Eu­ro­pean Film Fes­ti­val, aimed at high­light­ing cul­tur­al ex­change and shared val­ues.

As Eu­rope Day ap­proach­es on May 9, the mes­sage from the EU mis­sion is one of “con­cil­ia­to­ry” diplo­ma­cy—of­fer­ing its own ex­pe­ri­ence with com­pro­mise as a mod­el for strength­en­ing re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.