MITCHELL:CARICOM MUST REACT STRONGLY TO EU SANCTIONS
For Immediate Release
8 May 2020
There is a need for a more vigourous response to the recent announcement that The Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbados and other countries are to be placed on a blacklist of countries by the European Union which will make it harder for our financial services sector to operate and for Bahamians to do business overseas and in particular in Europe. This will put at risk thousands of well-paying jobs in the region.
Our Finance spokesman has already expressed the outrage of the party. The truth is this is quite a petty and cruel act at a time when the CARICOM region and indeed the whole world are in an economic crisis as a result of the health pandemic. It is an act of cruelty which will further impoverish an already impoverished sub region.
It is therefore time for the CARICOM region to sponsor a number of stringent measures to deal with the European Union.
The suggested menu of options could include:
Announcing the immediate withdrawal of CARICOM Ambassadors from Brussels back home for consultations and refusing to meet with the EU at that level until such time as the EU resiles from its position or the matter is otherwise settled;
Sponsoring a joint resolution at the United Nations General Assembly in the fall to denounce the unilateral actions of the European Union and renewing the call for a global approach to financial services through the United Nations;
Announcing that our Ambassadors will now seek to meet with the United States and with the United Kingdom to see what measures we can take together to defang the European Union of its blacklisting overreach on financial services in the world; especially given its incoherent central banking infrastructure within its own affairs which causes its members greater structural stress than any perceived impact of offshore centres in the CARICOM region among other small sovereign states;
As both the United States and the United Kingdom are currently opposed to the EU in other policy spheres of operation, our countries might find synergies with these our traditional allies the UK and the US.
These are in kinds suggestions offered to the undiplomatic and unwieldy tactics as solutions by the EU. Surely the Bahamian public and the CARICOM public have simply had enough of the effort to recolonize our countries.
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