Africa-Press – Mauritius. The Ambassador of the European Union (EU), Mr Vincent Degert, paid a farewell call on the Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, this afternoon, at the Treasury Building in Port Louis.
In a statement, Mr Degert said that he had a very warm meeting with the Prime Minister whereby they discussed and reviewed the past four years of his tenure as Ambassador of the EU.
He spoke mainly of the challenges during that time, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the European tourists who were stranded in Mauritius during the lockdown period, the relaunching of the tourist sector, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, and the MV Wakashio oil spill.
Mr Degert also said that Mauritius will soon host a conference on maritime security and added that it is very important to devise concrete operational solutions on how to avoid incidents such as the Wakashio oil spill.
Furthermore, he dwelt on the need to further secure the Indian Ocean waters where drug and arm trafficking are rampant. The importance of reinforcing cooperation between Mauritius and other countries was also highlighted by Mr Degert.
On a personal note, he said that he discovered Mauritius as a beautiful country with a rich biodiversity, which needs to be preserved at all cost. His successor will take office in Mauritius on the 1st of September 2023.
It is recalled that Mr Vincent Degert was designated the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the EU and Head of Delegation to Mauritius on 18 September 2019.
He graduated in Political Science, European Affairs (Institute for Political Science and Institute for European Studies of Strasbourg) and Law from the University of Strasbourg. He joined the European Commission in 1987 where he first worked in the field of regional policy.
From 2000, he worked for the enlargement of the EU, successively as Assistant to the Director-General for Enlargement and Head of Unit for the Coordination of Financial Instruments.
He then served as Ambassador and Head of Delegation in Croatia from 2005 to 2009 and Serbia from 2009 to 2013, before becoming the Head of the Russia Division within the European External Action Service at the height of the Ukrainian crisis. From 2015 to 2019 he was the Ambassador of the EU to the Republic of Haiti.
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