Portugal’s State Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, João Cravinho, yesterday encouraged Cape Verde to “develop mechanisms” allowing it to “benefit fully from European funds and programs” within the context of the special partnership with the European Union, which was approved Monday, November 19, by the 27 European Union member states.

“The next step will be to develop the mechanisms, in Cape Verde, to take advantage of the potentialities that have been created,” said Cravinho, quoted by Portuguese news agency Lusa, after a meeting in Brussels of the European Union government ministers responsible for cooperation programs.

João Cravinho explained that the statute “creates a wide range of possibilities” for Cape Verde, with the archipelago able to benefit, from now on, from “funds and programs” that were previously closed to it, including, for example, the European Regional Development Fund and others related to the EU’s ultra-peripheral regions.

Cravinho also revealed that a “political dialogue forum” will be held annually between the European Union and Cape Verde, and that the European Parliament will begin moving forward with concrete ideas for the first of these meetings “within the first few months of 2008.”

The “special partnership” will reinforce political dialogue and economic convergence between the two parties, moving beyond the traditional donor/beneficiary relationship with the establishment of a Framework of mutual interests, according to the document adopted Monday by the European Council of General Affairs and Foreign Relations.

Source: A Semana