The Courier

José Manuel Barroso and Alpha Oumar Konaré, Chairperson of the African Union in Lisbon.

© EC

Seven years after the first EU-Africa Summit in Cairo and the failure to hold a second meeting in 2003, due to a clash over whether an invitation to attend or not should be extended to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, the Lisbon Summit launched the new strategic partnership between the two continents. This new relationship and the new Joint Africa-EU Strategy will be implemented through a first Action Plan (2008-2010) with eight specific EU-Africa partnerships, covering more than 20 priority actions in areas such as peace and security, democratic governance and human rights, trade and regional integration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), energy, climate change, migration, mobility and employment, science, information society and space. The initial results will be reviewed at the next Summit, scheduled to take place in Africa in 2010.

Action plan

The 70-plus government leaders from the two continents undertook to ensure that the African Peace and Security Architecture becomes fully operational, while creating the required structure for the foreseen funding of African peace-keeping activities. In the coming months, Somalia will provide an opportunity for this commitment to be tested out on the ground.

The partnership is also due to cover the promotion of the African Peer Review Mechanism and support for the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, while stepping up cooperation on cultural goods. The action plan also focuses on trade, regional integration and measures to strengthen Africa’s ability to establish standards and quality controls and see the launch of an ambitious EU-Africa partnership on infrastructure that has been earmarked a €5.6 billion package. Other parts of the Action Plan include accelerating the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and improving common energy security and energy access. Another key objective is to develop a common policy-making agenda for addressing the implications of climate change. Also featured are migration, mobility and employment where emphasis will be put on the implementation of the declaration of the Tripoli Conference on Migration and Development and the EU-Africa Plan of Action on Trafficking of Human Beings. In addition, the Action Plan also focuses on support for the development of an information society in Africa and on making special efforts to build scientific capability.

Within the broader EU-Africa context, and to implement the agreed priorities, the European Commission and 31 ACP States from sub-Saharan Africa in Lisbon, jointly signed cooperation programmes known as Country Strategy Papers for the period 2008-2013, valued in excess of €8 billion (see inset). Similar agreements will be signed with other countries in the coming weeks to bring the EU's commitment through the 10th European Development Fund to Sub-Saharan Africa countries to between €11 and €12 billion over 2008-2013. This figure does not include additional funding for contingencies, regional aid, European Investment Bank (EIB) financing and the separate cooperation programme with South Africa, the North African countries and other agreements, such as trade-related assistance. On top of these agreements, separate cooperation programmes have been concluded with North African countries as well as loans from the EIB.

“Indispensable Alliance”

In the words of the Commissioner for Development, Louis Michel, the Joint Strategy, the Action Plan and the individual agreements all seek to forge an ‘indispensable alliance’ between the two continents, jointly addressing the challenges of the future and transcending the different views that may have been expressed during the Lisbon Summit. It was a Summit that lived up to all its promises in terms of straight-talking open discussion and relegating the one-sided donor-recipient relationship of the past to history.

An example was when Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, took the opportunity to remind President Robert Mugabe about the universal scope of values such as human rights. He reacted to this by lambasting the "arrogance" of Germany and other countries that criticised him. Later, a call by Libya's President Muamar Gaddafi for compensation for colonial misdeeds was met by a refusal from Louis Michel, who spoke of the huge amount of development aid Europe had allocated in recent decades to the region. Seeking to unite both sides, the President of the African Union Commission, Alpha Omar Konaré, urged the leaders from both continents to "bury definitively the colonial past".

And now, despite these forthright statements, Euro-Libyan relations have broken new ground with the European Council's decision of 14 December to open negotiations to concluding a cooperation agreement with Tripoli.

Neither did the two sides shy away from sensitive issues, such as migration. An issue where Europe is concerned about an influx of illegal immigrants and Africa is anxious to stem the brain drain, but where both sides want to seize the opportunities offered by circular migration, employment opportunities and job creation.

The spotlight was also turned on the prospect of World Trade Organisation (WTO)-compatible trade agreements – the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements: EPAs. During 2008, these are expected to replace non-reciprocal trade preferences from which ACP States have so far benefitted under the Cotonou Agreement’s trade clauses.

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade expressed his opinion that Africa was not ready to create a free trade area with Europe.  Two European leaders sympathised to some extent with this view. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said “more time” had to be given to the negotiations, whereas President Nicolas Sarkozy of France added his acknowledgement of the vulnerability of some ACP countries. Yet, other European officials, stress that such views do not reflect the position of the EU, which has given a mandate to the European Commission to negotiate the EPAs with the ACP countries.

Nonetheless, the East African Community, several Southern African and Indian Ocean states, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have all concluded interim trade-in-goods agreements with the European Commission. The institution's President, José Manuel Barroso, pledged to hold consultations with the leaders of the four African regions before launching a new round of talks next February to finalise comprehensive EPAs with all sub-Saharan countries. Such deals will also cover trade in services, investments, intellectual property and the opening up of public procurement to outside competition.