Excellency, it was not so long ago – perhaps a little over a year - that on behalf of the Caribbean Community, I had the honour to receive the credentials of your predecessor, His Excellency Ambassador Helmut Olhraun, accrediting him to the Caribbean Community. It was a historic event, as Ambassador Olhraun was the first Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to be accredited to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

In his very short tour of duty, Ambassador Olhraun demonstrated a keen interest in and deep knowledge of CARICOM. Indeed, he was a worthy pioneer.

As we bid him farewell and thank him for his contribution to enhancing Germany/CARICOM relations, we welcome you Ambassador Martens, his successor, with the traditional warmth of the Caribbean and with the expectation and confidence that under your stewardship, relations between CARICOM and the Federal Republic of Germany will grow even stronger.

Indeed, Excellency, quite apart from Germany’s evident goodwill toward the Caribbean, we note with pleasure the quality of its representation, reflected in your impressive resume which gives us every assurance that our expectations and confidence would be justified.

We therefore warmly welcome you, Excellency, to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Ambassador, ladies and gentlemen, you are all aware of the exciting, ambitious, and accelerated integration programme that the Community has set itself, in bringing into being the CARICOM Single Market and Economy - the CSME. The Single Market is virtually fully in place, complete with free movement of an ever-expanding category of persons, a functioning Caribbean Court of Justice, and a soon-to-be established Competition Commission.

Simultaneously, efforts are moving apace to operationalise a number of institutions central to the establishment of the Single Economy. These include the Caribbean Development Fund, the Regional Development Agency and the Regional Accreditation Agency.

Your accreditation, Excellency, therefore comes at an exciting time indeed for CARICOM; a time when as the Community matures, our Heads of Government have decided on a further more inclusive – “Community for all” approach to integration. This approach envisages a Community in which, through enhanced attention to functional cooperation the quality of life of the People of CARICOM, would be even more greatly enhanced.

This results from the greater emphasis which will be placed on key issues such as, health, environment and sustainable development, education, youth, sport and culture. By their very nature, these issues are not only common and vital to all CARICOM, but they are also indispensable to the realisation of the enhancement of the quality of life in “a Community for all.”

Germany – your country- has embarked on a number of areas of cooperation with CARICOM for which we are pleased. These include:

• The assistance provided by your Agency for Technical Cooperation to the CARICOM Youth Ambassador Programme;

• The CARICOM Technical Vocational and Educational Training Programme; and

• The co-financing of the Caribbean Renewable Energy Resources Project.

No area of our cooperation, however, more immediately impacts on the lives of our people than that in regard to the global scourge of HIV/AIDS. And I look forward, with pleasure to being afforded the opportunity to sign an Agreement on behalf of the Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP).

The funds provided by your government in the sum of up to eight Million Euros are most welcome at this time, for we are at a delicate stage in the fight against this scourge. It is a time when mortality from AIDS is declining, but at the same time, the prevalence rates of HIV and AIDS are increasing.

It is for that reason that PANCAP at its recently concluded Annual General Meeting on 25-26 October, 2007, agreed that universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment must be the flagship around which to guide its Plan of Action in the next five years. Within this framework and given the current trends in the profile of the disease, it is essential that emphasis be placed on prevention. Your country’s contribution to the prevention of that scourge is deeply appreciated.

Excellency, we look forward with great expectation to enlarging the areas of cooperation with Germany to include other critical issues such as Climate Change and, given Germany’s weighty role in the European Union (EU), the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), currently the subject of negotiations between the EU and CARIFORUM.

But Excellency, our cooperation has quite sensitively included our youth. Most recently, in fact only a few weeks ago, your Government hosted a group of young people from the Caribbean Community, including members of the staff of the CARICOM Secretariat and CARICOM Youth Ambassadors. The event was the Summer Academy on Comparative Regional Integration, held at the Centre for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn. The programme aimed to strengthen the knowledge of young academics and practitioners from over twenty countries through critical assessment of a broad range of matters on regional integration, including the European Union (EU) as a model.

From all accounts, this exercise was a tremendous success, with the participants from the CARICOM Secretariat describing it as, and I quote their words, “a rich and delightful fusion of academic and cultural activities” which afforded them an in-depth exploration of the concept of Global Proliferation of Regional Integration. I am pleased to note that the organizers were equally satisfied with the outcome, as only last week I received communication from the Director commenting favourably on the cooperation between CARICOM and the Centre, and expressing a desire to enhance that cooperation.

One step envisaged in that regard, is the possibility of the Centre, in collaboration with CARICOM, developing a curriculum geared to the specific training needs of the CARICOM Secretariat. This indeed would be an excellent example of the far-reaching impact of interaction between regional groups and entities with a mandate for Human Development.

In a less programmed, but equally significant way, the cultural exchange facilitated by Caribbean participation in the Football World Cup in Germany just last year, fuels the relations between our Region and your country. For us in the Region, the Soca Warriors were, for all intents and purposes, not simply Trinidad and Tobago’s and not just a football team but a team of Ambassadors. The warm hospitality which your country showed to them was rarely shown to the CARICOM citizenry. It is one which still resonates.

I am told, Excellency, that Germany and Caribbean fans together, so enjoyed the carnival atmosphere created by the Caribbean performers including steel bands and carnival bands there especially to support the Soca Warriors, that some of the German revellers were taken aback by the high spirits of the visitors and had to check again to see whether indeed the Soca Warriors had won. They could not conceive of such revelry by the supporters of a team that had lost a match. But such, your Excellency, is the nature of our people. And into that environment and culture, Excellency, we warmly welcome you.