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Brussels, 23 March 2017/ ACP: Speaker of the National Assembly Hon. Micheal Perkins and Clerk of the Assembly Ms Sonia Boddie represented St.Kitts-Nevis  at the 45th Session of the African, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) Parliamentary Assembly and the Inter-sessional meetings of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) held from the 21^st to 24^th March 2017 in Brussels, Belgium at the European Parliament.

The JPA is a key organ of the ACP-EU relationship, in which parliamentarians of both the 79 ACP states and the 28 EU states engage bi-annually to discuss issues of mutual concern that affect ACP-EU matters. Meetings of the JPA have grown increasingly more important as the expiration date of the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement, which governs ACP-EU relations, approaches in 2020.

 

The ACP-EU partnership is responsible for mobilising significant EU development aid for Belize and for setting the terms for Belize’s trade with the EU, Belize’s second most important export market.

 

The meeting of CARIFORUM Parliamentarians and Ambassadors focused on the issues of priority importance to the Caribbean region in the evolving discussions on the future of the ACP-EU relations post-2020 in areas of development cooperation, trade and political dialogue.