The African Union and the European Union met last week (19-23 February) to start discussions on the new joint EU-Africa Strategy. The discussions will continue in a first stage until the May Ministerial Troika meeting. Your contributions to this process are important, and the officials will continue to take them into consideration, as the joint press release makes clear.
The joint press release reads:
- The results of this week’s work have enabled the AU and the EU to examine the objectives and principles for their future strategic partnership. The experts agreed that the Partnership should establish a long-term Alliance with a view to promoting peace, security, development and integration of Africa; strengthening the political Partnership as a means of finding solutions to concerns of each party and common issues such as poverty alleviation, Millenium Development Goals, democratic governance, gender mainstreaming, energy, migration, and so on; combining our efforts to establish an Alliance for global governance in the international fora based on our commitment to an effective multilateralism to address globalisation, climate change, WMD non-proliferation and terrorism; involving all stakeholders of the two continents in a people-centred partnership.
- The meeting made clear that there is strong will to work on a new strategic partnership based on common interest, mutual respect, realistic expectations, solidarity, mutual obligations, accountability and transparency. This set of principles should guide the elaboration of the future joint Africa-EU joint Strategy, which should be operationalised throughout the different areas of the partnership. The subsequent Troika expert meeting should focus on these aspects.
- It was also recognised that for such a political partnership to sustain long term benefits for the people of the two continents, the support, participation and ongoing consultation of the African and European public will be essential and the EU and AU experts will take stock of the contributions made by African and European Non State Actors around mid-April.
Read the full press release – pdf.
View ECDPM’s summary report – doc.
- Disclaimer: This ECDPM report does not represent any official position of either the AU or EU parties involved.
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