Louis Michel co-chairs the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly

Louis Michel (left), new Co-President of the ACP-EU Joint Assembly with fellow ACP Co-President Wilkie Rasmussen (right) at a meeting of the Assembly’s Bureau, Brussels. © Robert Iroga

After five years at the helm of European development cooperation policy, Belgian Louis Michel is now a member of the European Parliament (Alliance of liberals and democrats). Although sitting full-time on the EP’s ‘Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee’, the former Commissioner has not turned his back on his former love. He is a substitute member of the EP’s Development Committee and is notably now co-President of the African, Caribbean and Pacific-European Union (ACP-EU) Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Sitting alongside him is the ACP’s choice for co-President, the Cook Islands’ Deputy Prime Minister, Wilkie Rasmussen.

Louis Michel hence continues to influence relations between the EU and ACP countries who remain the EU’s privileged partners. But Louis Michel has bigger ambitions. His government has put him forward as candidate for the rotating Presidency of the United Nations General Assembly. The current incumbent is Libya’s Ali Abdussalam Treki. The General Assembly has a consultative role for international peace and security issues as well as decison-making powers on the United Nations’ budget and new UN membership.