BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, (CMC) – The Deputy Secretary General for Economic and Global Issues of the European Union’s External Action Service (EEAS), Helena König on Tuesday said the European Union is committed to assisting its security partners in the Caribbean.

“Fighting transnational organised crime is a common priority for our regions, as consequences of the illicit trade of drugs and firearms are felt on both sides of the Atlantic,” said König, who paid a visit to the headquarters of the Regional Security System (RSS) in Bridgetown.

The RSS and the EU recently renewed their partnership, signing a cooperation deal that will allow for the delivery of six training modules to RSS member states’ law enforcement and border security personnel.

The project will also include the rollout of a full-scale field training exercise at sea in St Lucia next year. The RSS has also benefitted from EU support since 2016, with the aim of strengthening the organisation’s capacity to respond to transnational crime threats.

RSS executive director, Commodore Errington Shurland, in welcoming König, to the headquarters noted that the RSS has enjoyed an extremely rewarding partnership with the European Union.

“The new partnership with the European Union, seeks to build on our previous cooperation in strengthening institutional capacities to respond to common factors in our criminogenic environment,” he said.

“It is expected to foment our capacity to manage transnational organised crime in a realistic way with capacity-building programmes aimed at operational planning, intelligence analysis, counter-terrorism tactics, polygraph examinations and the full-scale exercise to test the RSS response mechanism in addressing organised crime,” Shurland added.

He said this slew of interventions will ensure that the RSS membership will be provided with an opportunity to build further capacity in designing and executing effective inter-agency operations in response to transnational organised crime.