CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington says integration is not for the faint of heart and more has to be done to deliver on the promise of integration.

Delivering remarks at the opening of the Second Meeting of the Secretary-General and Heads of Community Institutions in George-town yesterday, Carrington drew attention to the fact that  a recent survey of the EU has shown that only 52 percent of the population consider the European integration process as being beneficial to their country. And the Irish, one of the major beneficiaries of European integration, has now joined with the French and Dutch in rejecting the EU Constitution.

He highlighted this in  pointing out that many of those charged with the implementation of Community policy had assembled for the second time in less than a year in order to continue the process of strengthening the  integration arrangement and taking it to a higher level, according to a copy of his remarks released by the CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown.

“Meetings such as these,” Carrington said,  “are a recognition that more needs to be done in the struggle to deliver on the promise of integration; to deliver on the promise of a Community For All; to deliver on the goal of a just, viable, prosperous and secure society for all our people.”

And noting that the Community had been “buffeted by words and deeds from outside and from within its borders” the Secretary-General said that in that regard, besides certain foreign commentators, “some prominent regional voices and members of the media corps appear to be losing heart and are on the verge of, if not already, predicting collapse of the integration process.”

Carrington acknowledged that some of this was due to the Economic Partnership Agree-ment with the European Union (EU) to which the Community is about to subscribe.

He said further that “some is also due to the fact that we have not adopted suitable governance structures and point to the European model of governance despite the differences in geography, history and culture, and notwithstanding the fact that the experience of some who have copied the European model has been somewhat unflattering.”