BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – The fourth Caribbean Basin Coastal Surveillance and Maritime Security conference began in Barbados on Wednesday with the European Union announcing that it would provide Euro 2.5 million towards the fight against drug trafficking and international criminal networks in the Caribbean.

Head of the European Union Delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Ambassador Mikael Barfod, said that the funding, which is being provided through the EU Seaport Co-operation Project (SEACOP) will assist with the establishment of joint national maritime intelligence units, a regional maritime information system, as well as regional and trans-regional networking and technical assistance.

The development of such infrastructure should lead to increased targeting of suspected vessels, a unified maritime intelligence system, increased drug seizures and enhanced multi-agency co-operation.

“Coastal surveillance and maritime security is very important to the Caribbean and Europe, since both have a common purpose, which is the eradication of drug trafficking in the region,” the European diplomat told the two-day conference.

Since 2009 the European Union has committed almost Euro 35 million, through the Cocaine Route Programme, to over 38 countries along the cocaine route – Central America, the Caribbean, West South and North Africa and on to Europe.

The EU said that the Cocaine Route Programme was the first of its kind to think strategically about the flow of drug trafficking and to provide support, technical advice, capacity building and encourage coordination between states situated along the entire route.

Meanwhile, prior to the start of the conference, a former co-president of the European Union Latin American Caribbean Coordination and Cooperation Mechanism on Drugs (EU-LAC), Serena Joseph-Harris, said the Caribbean basin even as the Caribbean had become a hot seat for international trade shipping, poor maritime policing makes it a vulnerable through-target for illicit transiting of drugs, service firearms and other illegal cargo.

She said the immediate challenge for regional governments is to find the resources to secure territorial waters from the [transiting] cargo and to ensure that their ports and other points of entry become as impenetrable as they ought to be.

|International drug policy has now become an international debate”, she said, making reference to countries such as Colombia and Mexico which have placed legalisation as one of the cards on the table for consideration.