Africa-Press – Cape verde. Information confirmed by Expresso das Ilhas with the European Union. Derogation comes into force from January 2025.
Cape Verde will be entitled to another renewal of the fishing derogation, confirmed Expresso das Ilhas with a European Union source.
“The derogation was approved and will be published in the Jornal da União shortly after Easter,” a European Union source announced to Expresso das Ilhas.
The new derogation should be valid for the next two or three years.
The fisheries derogation allows Cape Verde to export processed fish products to the European Union free of customs duties and has been, over the years, the way found by successive governments to keep the canning sector working in Cape Verde, since The majority of companies in the sector are of Spanish origin.
Speaking to Expresso das Ilhas, Manuel Monteiro, deputy to the President of the Board of Directors of Frescomar, confirmed that “it is also known that the European Union will authorize a new derogation, which in principle is in the process of being approved”.
With a large part of the raw material being imported to work and export to the European Union “until the new derogation is authorized, the company is working with some difficulties, because we have to pay the deposit for our products in the European Union”, explained Manuel Monteiro.
Job retention
The previous agreement ended on December 31, 2023 and concerned the preparations or preserves of tuna, mackerel, mackerel and smooth or jewfish fillets, allowing Cape Verde to export annually up to 5 thousand tons of tuna fillets, 3 thousand tons of tuna fillets, mackerel and mackerel and a thousand tons of smooth jew.
Asked whether the new derogation is important for the continuity of Frescomar in Cape Verde, Manuel Monteiro responds affirmatively.
“We can say yes. As I said at the beginning, Frescomar works with a large part of imported raw materials, because our National Armacao until now is not capable of supplying our needs, the quantities that we work with daily and annually”.
Agreements by country
Derogations are always temporary in nature and have been a source of uncertainty over the years regarding the future of the canning sector in Cape Verde.
Manuel Monteiro assures that there are alternatives to the derogation and that the European Union is even looking for other forms of cooperation.
“For example, the European Union recently, in the meetings we had with European Union delegates in Brussels, put forward another alternative that the country should explore. For example, through economic partnership”, pointed out Manuel Monteiro.
The initial objective of the European Union, he explains, was to formalize an agreement between the European Union and the ECOWAS countries, similar to what has been done with other groups of countries, both in Africa and the Americas.
“Through these economic partnership agreements with groups of countries, there is the possibility of obtaining a [fishing] quota similar to the derogation, but it is already within a package that is negotiated with the European Union, renewed every four or five years , which is much more stable.”
However, the process ended up encountering obstacles because Nigeria did not ratify the agreement.
Thus, Expresso das Ilhas knows, the European Union may choose to establish agreements with individual countries, instead of negotiating with the ECOWAS bloc.
“The European Union has raised the possibility of making [an agreement] with Cape Verde” similar to those it “did with Ivory Coast, Ghana and. recently, with Benin”
Manuel Monteiro has no doubts in stating that this is “an agreement that must be worked on and discussed, they even left it open that this derogation could be the last”, he concluded.
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