Olivier Consolo, CONCORD Director recently outlined a road map for EU civil society activities in 2007. He argues that CONCORD members have a “serious opportunity for mobilising all our resources and talents in order to have a significant influence on a major political process: the future of relations between the European Union and Africa. A future that is uncertain, because it is constantly evolving under pressure from new political, economic and social agendas.”
CONCORD sees the process by which the EU and the African Union (AU) are speeding up their approval of a new political framework as “not just one more statement… It is actually about redefining the priorities for the partnership between the two regions, primarily to tackle what EU officials call “the new challenges” – security, migration, energy, the position of North African countries (which do not belong to the ACP and are at present covered by the EU’s neighbourhood policy), the process of regional integration in Africa (AU), new economic partnership agreements (EPAs), priorities for aid to Africa (in particular through the current negotiations on the 10th European Development Fund, or EDF), etc.”
He argues that for such a “highly complex agenda” political leaders in Europe must “stop this mad rush!”
They must “give the players involved – in particular the African States, institutions and civil society – time to start debates in their own countries on the colossal implications that all these agreements will have on the lives of millions of citizens in Africa and on the nature of the political relationship between the two regions!”
“Without this extra time and without real democratic debates in each region and between the EU and Africa, it is very unlikely that the people and civil society concerned will feel committed to these new relations which our politicians are intending to put in place in the name of ‘mutual interests’.”
Read the full story in the CONCORD Flash (December 2006-January 2007)
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