Brussels, Feb. 13, 2025 (Lusa) - Cabo Verde's minister of defence, Janine Lélis, announced on Thursday that she is to receive a visit from a team of experts from the European Union to help the country work on its plan to access the European Peace Facility (EPF).
"We have good prospects and next week we will receive a technical team in Cabo Verde that will carry out an on-the-ground assessment and consultation in order to later prepare and submit a project for validation and a final decision by the member states," said Lélis, speaking from Brussels, as quoted by Rádio de Cabo Verde (RCV).
On Wednesday, the minister had met with the deputy secretary general for economic affairs of the EU's European External Action Service, with the aim of discussing the issue further.
"It's a European Union funding mechanism that Cabo Verde wants to access," she said. "There is a dialogue with the [EU] Political and Security Committee to show our willingness and explain the importance of this partnership, which we want to build."
The partners of the Budget Support Group (GAO) for the archipelago, which include the EU, have advocated "studying new forms of cooperation" and "developing equipment, training and capacity-building programmes that could be funded through the MEAP, in order to strengthen the country's capacity to monitor its territorial waters."
The MEAP was created in March 2021 to finance all EU Common Foreign and Security Policy actions in the military and defence fields, with the aim of preventing conflicts, preserving peace and strengthening international security and stability.
Cabo Verde has sought various forms of international support in order to strengthen maritime surveillance, due to a lack of its own resources: the archipelago is made up of 10 islands and several islets, with around 4,000 square kilometres of land (slightly less than Portugal's Algarve), but an extensive Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of over 734,000 square kilometres (larger than Ukraine).
Also on Wednesday, in Brussels, Lelis signed a memorandum with her Luxembourg counterpart, Yuriko Backes, to strengthen cooperation in the area of maritime security, which should increase support from that EU member state. The last aid it gave to Cabo Verde was around €400,000 over three years, used to modernise the Maritime Security Operations Centre (COSMAR).
The reinforcement of cooperation includes training, technical assistance, cybersecurity and the use of images from a satellite to be launched by Luxembourg.
RS/ARO // ARO.
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