Africa-Press – Cape verde. The fisheries agreement between Cape Verde and the European Union (EU) is mutually beneficial, both for the European Union and for Cape Verde, and strengthens and consolidates partnership and friendship between the parties.
The statement is by the Minister of the Sea, Abraão Vicente, and was made today, in Mindelo, in a press conference to address the approval of the new agreement for the period 2024-2029.
“This is an economic partnership, not only affective, in a perspective of continuity, through an exploitation and sustainable use of fishery resources, namely highly migratory species,” said the minister, that is, he continued, are not species that compete with the species typically caught by open boats and industrial fishing in Cape Verde.
In fact, according to the same source, with the reduction and authorization from 69 boats to 56 with the new agreement, Cape Verde achieves a “significant improvement”, because, he has relucted, “more captures in the waters of the archipelago, more is paid, the financial availability for scientific support is increased and the national fleet is protected”.
It is also, he assured, an agreement that strengthens partnership and mutual collaboration in combating illegal and unreported fishing, which will strengthen the capacity for governance and management of training and that supports local fishing communities in infrastructure, value chains and projects linked to the blue economy.
In numbers, the minister indicated that the value of 3,900,000 euros during the term of the agreement, the additional value of the licenses of the armors should be added according to the number of licenses requested from the fishing administration of Cape Verde.
“The new agreement has the reference tonnage of 7,000 tons, a reduction of 1,000 tons, therefore 13% lower than the previous agreement and provides for a reduction of 19 % of the fishing effort,” indicou.
The minister recalled that the agreement is also a benefit for companies of national transformation that, at this moment, suffer from the lack of resources and that the bet on young people and women has to do with all the guidelines, the SDG lines, but this does not mean that fishermen and national companies are not made of Cape Verdean citizens.
This is alluding to the alleged counterparts that benefit only young people and women, rather than fishermen and shipowners, as claimed by the Fisheries Wealth of the Fishermen.
For the future, Abraão Vicente maintained that it is necessary to increase the conditions of supervision of the Coast Guard and make the ports of Cape Verde more competitive.
“The big goal, in the medium term, and I believe that the process of privatization of the port will allow it, is to make the ports of Cape Verde able to create competitive conditions to make the ships of the European Union discharge a significant part of what they fish in our ports,” he concluded.
The renewal of the fisheries partnership agreement between Cape Verde and the European Union was announced on Wednesday 24, and will allow 56 fishing vessels from Portugal, Spain and France to access Cape Verdean waters by 2029.
Cape Verde and Europe have had a fisheries agreement since 2007, revised in 2019 and with the agreement published on Wednesday to be effective until 2029. The text with the final information will be signed in Brussels (Belgium) between Cape Verde, which will be represented by Ambassador José Filomeno, and the part of the European Union by a Director-General.
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