By INEWS
Copyright inewsguyana
Four Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Member States – Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines – are on track to implement full free movement among themselves from 1 October this year.
In a press release on Monday, the CARICOM Secretariat said that by implementing the full free movement regime, these four countries have agreed to grant their nationals the right to enter, leave and re-enter, move freely, reside, work and remain indefinitely in the receiving member state, without the need for a work or residency permit.
Their nationals will also be able to access emergency and primary health care, and public primary and secondary education, within the means of the receiving Member State.
This is in keeping with the CARICOM Heads’ decision taken at the 49th Regular Meeting of the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government this year. Representatives from these four Member States have been meeting and working to ensure the required measures to support the full free movement of their nationals will be undertaken and commence on 1 October 2025.
According to the Secretariat, this free movement arrangement falls within the new Enhanced Cooperation Chapter of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. Under that Chapter, the Conference of CARICOM Heads can allow groups of at least three Member States to seek to advance integration among themselves where the Conference agrees that the targeted objectives cannot be attained within a reasonable period by the Community as a whole.
“This type of free movement expands what is offered under the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). It is available to all CARICOM nationals of the participating four countries.
The other Member States participating in the CSME will continue to operate free movement under the existing Regimes (Skills, Services, Business Establishment and general facilitation of travel),” the release stated. CARICOM was established on July 4, 1973 with the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which was revised in 2001 to allow for the establishment of a single market and economy.
CARICOM comprises fifteen Member States and six Associate Members and is home to approximately sixteen million citizens, 60 per cent of whom are under 30 years old. CARICOM’s work rests on four main pillars: economic integration; foreign policy coordination; human and social development; and security cooperation.
