(15th November 2023)
- Reverend Vaitusi Nofoaiga
- H.E. Ms. Pilar CANCELA RODRIGUEZ, Secretary of State for International Cooperation of the Kingdom of Spain, Presidency in Office of the Council of the Kingdom of Spain, Presidency in Office of the Council of the European Union
- Hon. Bendito DOS SANTOS FREITAS, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste and Chair of the ACP Council of Ministers
- Professor the Honourable Robert DUSSEY, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Togolese Republic
- H.E. Mr. George Rebelo CHIKOTI, OACPS Secretary General and ACP Co-Secretary of the ACP-EU Council of Ministers
- Mr. Bostjan SPORAR, EU Co-Secretary of the ACP-EU Council of Ministers
- Members of the Judiciary
- Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Guests,
O lea ua taunu’u i matautu na aai lo tatou fa’amoemoe sa fauao, ma faupo. O le fa’amoemoe ua taunu’u o le laau o le soifua lea.
I believe all of us here today for the Samoa Agreement Signing Ceremony are saying: FINALLY!! – we have now reached the final destination for the negotiations that was launched in 2018 for a renewed partnership agreement to replace the Cotonou Agreement.
Many have dedicated time, energy, and resources to produce the Samoa Agreement text that has brought all of us to Samoa this week. I wish to acknowledge in this regard the hard work and dedication of all the lead negotiators that have worked tirelessly to secure the consensus of 106 countries on the Samoa Agreement Text.
We pay tribute to the lead negotiators for the ACP and EU sides, Professor the Honourable Robert DUSSEY, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Togolese Republic and H.E. Ms. Jutta URPILAINEN, the EU Commissioner for International Partnership. I am particularly pleased that both of you are here today to sign.
I also wish to acknowledge all the supporting negotiators and lead negotiators for the regional protocols from both the ACP and EU sides as well as our ACP Secretariat. Some of them are here today. Please put your hands together as a show of our appreciation and gratitude for their work.
As we know, the ACP Council of Ministers endorsed Samoa as the venue for the signing event in 2019. We have waited four years to host you in our island home. Samoa is grateful that you have chosen our Blue Pacific region as the venue of this historic event. This is important for us. Inviting all of you to Samoa allows you also to experience and appreciate our lived realities and challenges but also to share with you a bit of our culture and approach to life.
As ACP-EU, we are a diverse and large group of nations from all corners of the world, and we have agreed that there is value in our ACP-EU relations. Understanding each other is key to the success of any partnership. We pleased that you have all travelled to the furthest of our ACP-EU family to renew our legal framework for our continued and strengthened collaboration on Key strategies priorities.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
The world is constantly changing and our respective countries which are already vulnerable, have been harshly subjected to the multiple global crises that are multi-dimensional and complex in their scope and nature. We are faced with a plethora of challenges that often require collective solutions. We are weathering unprecedented time that calls for unity, solidarity and the need for strengthened multilateralism.
The Samoa Agreement aims for a collective and united approach to some of these exact challenges we are facing from climate change to peace and security. It prioritizes human rights, democracy and good governance including gender equality and the rule of law. Social development and sustainable economic growth are and continued to be prioritized, thus making the effective implementation of the Samoa Agreement key to ongoing efforts in building resilient environment and economies.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
The Samoa Agreement may just be a text to some. But we must not forget the human faces behind such agreements. If you look at the banners displayed in this hall, you will see the faces of the children, the communities in our villages and the people of Samoa that have benefited from the EU water sector projects. These were made possible because of the existing partnership framework. Thank you OACPS. Thank you, EU.
While for varying, reasons some of our ACP-EU family could not join us today or are not ready to sign, the Samoa agreement is about our FAMILY.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I hope your brief sojourn in our islands has been as rewarding for you as it has been for us and that you will leave here with a sense of what it feels like to live in a small Pacific Island country.
I hope too that you have had a chance to see how we celebrate our culture to fully appreciate how interwoven our lives, economies and societies are with our environment. But fundamentally, we all are part of a global family and our destinies are very much linked with yours.
We welcomed you as our guests, you leave us as family. I count on you all to be champions of the Samoa Agreement.
Thank you.
