Securing The GoG

The head of the European Union mission in Congo, Marcel Van Opstal, has reasserted that the EU will assist countries in the Gulf of Guinea to secure their maritime waters.

Speaking in Brazzaville at the end of talks with the Congolese deputy minister for merchant navy, Martin Parfait Aimé Coussoud Mavoungou, he said the EU wished to tighten the security conditions on the western coast of Africa, from Mauritania to South Africa.

Mr Opstal stressed the vulnerability and resurgence of piracy, illegal fishing and drug trafficking in the Gulf of Guinea.

‘We are not only concerned by the expansion of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, but also by other problems linked to security. We realise that the waters in the Gulf of Guinea are used for drug and child trafficking,” he said.

He said the objective was to define the problems, to hold dialogue with  national and regional authorities to be able to set the types of intervention and cooperation which the EU could develop with countries from the region to tighten security.