The European Parliament has published its draft report on the Joint Africa-EU Strategy and its role. It welcomes the fact that one year after the adoption of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy the main components of the institutional architecture for its implementation are finally in place.
It reiterates its request to the EU and AU Commissions to take active steps to involve the European and Pan-African Parliaments in implementing, monitoring and providing political guidance for the Joint Strategy, in line with their status as key components of its institutional architecture. It takes note of the fact that the 11th Africa-EU Minsiterial Troika meeting endorsed the first annual progress report, however the EP regrets that the report has been established without any consultation of or formal contribution from the European or Pan-African Parliaments.
It suggests that representatives of the competent bodies from the Pan-African and European Parliaments attend the ministerial Troika discussions prior to the adoption of the joint annual progress report, that they present to the ministerial Troika those Parliaments’ suggestions and recommendations on the joint annual progress report and that subsequent annual reports indicate how these have been taken into account. It addition, it invites the EU and AU Commissions to simplify procedures to ensure that the dialogue with Parliaments is effective and fluid and not dogged by unacceptable delays, taking due account of their procedural specificities.
The report draws attention to the civil society and non-state actors involvement and believes hat if the Joint Strategy is to be a genuine “broad-based and wide-ranging people-centred partnership”, it must effectively involve civil society and facilitate civil society’s effective participation in the work of its implementing bodies. It welcomes the AU ECOSOCC as a vehicle to build a partnership between African governments and civil society; is however concerned at the low level of involvement of African civil society in the implementation of the Joint Strategy and calls for immediate efforts, particularly on the African side, to set up, in close cooperation with interested stakeholders, procedures for the identification, mapping and effective involvement of representative African non-state actors.
The EP intends to generate inside the EP the necessary coordination and synergy between all its bodies to support the implementation and monitoring of the joint strategy. In their point of view, it is disappointing that the parliamentary component has yet to be fully incorparated into the joint strategy in a meaningful way. It is necessary that the EP and PAP become fully players of the strategy.
In the future, the PAP and EP should feed into the miniterial Troika’s discussions on the joint annual progress report which logs progress in implementating the joint strategy . Subsequent annual reports should explain how the Parliament’s observations were on board and if not why not.
The two parliaments should also play a full role in the Joint Expert Groups and the AU-EU Task Force. In addition, their decision-making procedures should also be part of the future discussion.
The EP observed that whilst the different components of the institutional architecture have been more or less put in place, there has been very little actual progress on the ground for most of the eight thematic partnerships. Given that the first action plan spans the period running up to 2010, some acceleration will be required if the ambitious targets are to be met. In Africa, but also in Europe, the credibility of a “peoples to peoples” strategy depends on its capacity to deliver tangible results, which constitute a real improvement in the quality of life of the African populations.
Read the full draft report – pdf
