Ambassador keen on deepening Niue – EU relations
The European Union Ambassador to Niue and the Pacific says bilateral relations with Niue have strengthened.
Ambassador Sujiro Seam on Tuesday presented his credentials and is now officially accredited as the Ambassador of EU to Niue.
Seam then met with members of cabinet who he says have agreed that EU and Niue relations have strengthened.
“That was a general discussion, so when we have elections coming in we always work with the government of the day which means that we will wait for the elections to take place before we re-engage but having said that we agreed that our relationship is already very strong and that we have the right priorities set up and that we will try to see how we can do more from the European Union side to assist Niue. I think we are very strong partners when it comes to climate change or oceans, sustainable development. Not only on the cooperation side, we also count on Niue to be a strong advocate on these issues on the international stage” said Seam
The Ambassador’s visit was to also inaugurate one of the EU Funded projects Liolau accommodation project in the village of Avatele and visit other EU funded project sites such as the National Emergency Operations centre and see improvements made to the renewable energy, power grid and waste management projects.
Shared development priorities with Niue the Ambassador says focuses on climate change, sustainable development with cooperation projects.
“We have basically three different lines of credit. One which is for the country so for Niue under the European Union Development Fund EDF and we’re now on the eleventh EDF so under the eleventh EDF we funded improvements to the power grid and renewable energy system. We have a second line of credit which is on regional programmes so there is right now in Niue there’s a team from SPREP which is doing a scoping mission on waste management. They do it because we task SPREP to implement our regional programme on waste management so that its also an opportunity to provide support to Niue in the area where we have regional programmes and finally we have a series of thematic programmes which address resilience and that’s how we managed to finance the Emergency Operations Centre so whichever package we can put together for Niue from the European Union will be a combination of our bilateral lines, our regional programmes and our thematic programmes.” said Seam
