The European Union in Africa

Incoherent policies, asymmetrical partnership, declining relevance?

Maurizio Carbone

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781784993870
• eBook ISBN: 9781526103307
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The European Union in Africa: Incoherent policies, asymmetrical partnership, declining relevance? provides a comprehensive analysis of EU-Africa relations since the beginning of the twenty-first century and includes contributions from leading experts in the field of EU external relations. It seeks to explain how the relationship evolved through discussion of a number of different policies and agreements, ranging from established areas such as aid, agriculture, trade and security, to new areas such as migration, climate change, energy and social policies. This book successfully challenges a number of widely-held assumptions on the role of the EU in Africa, and at the same time sheds light on the role and identity of the EU in the international arena. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in the field of EU external relations as well as practitioners of international development.

Part I

Introduction

1

EU–Africa relations in the twenty-first century: evolution and explanations

Maurizio Carbone

With the adoption of the Joint Africa–EU Strategy (JAES) (Council of the European Union, 2007) at the second summit between the European Union (EU) and Africa held in Lisbon in December 2007, it was announced that a new era in relations between the two parties was about to start. Some clashes, nevertheless, had occurred before the summit, when a heated debate took place over the participation of Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe: several EU member states were opposed to it, while all African countries defended their right to decide who should (and who should not) attend the meeting. More generally, the two partners seemed to have diverging agendas: for Europeans, the priorities were security and migration; for Africans, they were aid and trade. Tensions further escalated when the discussion touched upon the new free trade agreements introduced by the Cotonou Agreement (European Union, 2000), the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs): several African leaders stated that they were no longer willing to accept any imposition by the EU. This resentment was further alimented by the rise of interest in Africa of ‘emerging’ powers, most notably China but also the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India), which offered new partnership alternatives to several African countries.

Against this background, this volume seeks to explain how the relationship between the EU and Africa has evolved in the first decade of the twenty-first century. For this, it treats the EU as both a ‘bilateral donor’, focusing in particular on the new partnership agreement between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, and a ‘collective actor’, paying special attention to the JAES and a number of EU policies that affect African development beyond aid. More specifically, this introductory chapter sets the context for the remainder of the book. The first section sketches the evolution of EU–Africa relations, between the adoption of the Cotonou Agreement in June 2000 and the third Africa–EU Summit held in Tripoli in November 2010. The second section presents some contending explanations, drawing on studies of EU external relations as well as offering a perspective of Africa. The third section introduces the structure of the volume, giving an overview of the various chapters including the conclusion which summarises the key findings and more generally discusses tensions and contradictions in the EU’s policies towards Africa.

An evolving relationship: from Cairo to Tripoli via Cotonou

The evolution of EU–Africa relations should be set against two tracks. The first track concerns the programme managed by the European Commission. In this case, the most important change is certainly the adoption of the Cotonou Agreement, which marked a fundamental departure from the principles of the long-standing Lomé Convention.¹ The second track concerns the attempt to create a continent-wide policy towards Africa, under the slogan ‘one Europe, one Africa’, which started with the first Africa–EU Summit held in Cairo in April 2000.

The EU–ACP Partnership Agreements

When it was adopted in the early 1970s, the Lomé Convention was greeted as one of the most progressive agreements for North–South cooperation in that it established a contractual right to aid and gave ACP countries non-reciprocal trade preferences. But the disappointing performance of almost all ACP countries, the gradual inclusion of economic and political conditionalities by the EU, and the changing international context led to a profound re-thinking of the EU–ACP cooperation framework. The adoption of the Cotonou Agreement became part of a process of ‘normalisation’ between the EU and its former colonies. In fact, it was established that: aid allocation would be made conditional not only on recipient needs but also on their performance; new free trade agreements would replace the previous preferential trade regime after an interim period (2000–07); political dialogue, meant to include issues that previously fell outside the fields of cooperation (that is, peace and security, arms trade, migration, drugs and corruption) would be reinforced (Babarinde and Faber, 2005; Flint, 2009).

Less than two years after it came into force in April 2003 (because of the protracted process of ratification), the Cotonou Agreement was revised in February 2005. Its overall structure was not altered, but the few changes reflected the EU’s preferences. Security became a more important priority, and the new provisions in this area – such as combating terrorism, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), preventing mercenary activities and committing to the International Criminal Court (ICC) – were strongly criticised by African countries (Hadfield, 2007). The second revision, concluded in March 2010, introduced some changes with the view to strengthening cooperation in regional integration and climate change, and acknowledging the role of ACP national parliaments as actors of cooperation (Carbone, 2013). Interestingly, as soon as the second revision was concluded, the relevance of the EU–ACP framework started to be challenged by various parties, and not only in Europe. The issue, however, was not only whether the EU wanted to renew the Cotonou Agreement when it expires in 2020, but also whether the ACP continued to see the EU as its privileged partner. Some observers still pointed out how a number of common interests or shared values called for the revamping of the relationship between the two parties in a less asymmetrical fashion.

At the same time, besides these formal negotiation episodes, EU–ACP relations have been affected, if not compromised, by three issues. Firstly, the European Commission’s excessive emphasis on trade liberalisation over development in the negotiations of the EPAs was strongly criticised by African countries (as well as by some EU member states and the NGO (non-governmental organisation) community). Since no EPA had been signed with any of the African regions by December 2007, the negotiations continued after the agreed deadline. Eventually, several countries initialled (that is, they committed to signing) an interim EPA, but at the end of 2010 none of them agreed to fully ratify it (Ngangjoh-Hodu and Matambalya, 2010). Secondly, the risk of a securitisation of EU development policy became more evident in April 2004 when the funds for the newly created African Peace Facility (APF) were taken from the 9th European Development Fund (EDF), which until then had mainly been used for social and economic development. These concerns were partially mitigated by the fact that the APF was used for missions carried out by the African Union (AU) – in Sudan, the Comoros, Somalia and the Central African Republic – and to support capacity-building programmes of the AU Commission and other sub-regional organisations (Sicurelli, 2010). Thirdly, the implementation of the incentive-based approach to democratic governance, which was introduced by the 10th EDF and was meant to reward those countries which took concrete governance commitments, was disappointing. The EU assumed that all ACP countries would engage in reforms in order to get additional funds, but not only did most African countries perceive it as simply making resources conditional on good governance, but the actual disbursement patterns showed that most countries received the same amount of incentives (Molenaers and Nijs, 2009; Carbone, 2010).

The Joint Africa–EU Strategy

The real novelty in EU–Africa relations since the turn of the century has been the EU’s attempt to pursue a common (for member states and European institutions) and continent-wide (beyond North and sub-Saharan) approach to Africa. This process started with the first Africa–EU Summit held in Cairo in April 2000, but despite the adoption of a declaration and a plan of action it was clear that European representatives placed more emphasis on political aspects, most notably human rights, democracy and conflict prevention, while African representatives concentrated on economic issues, most notably aid, debt relief and trade opportunities. The second meeting planned for Lisbon in April 2003 was postponed owing to a disagreement over the participation of President Robert Mugabe and other Zimbabwean leaders. Because of the earlier imposition of a travel ban, several EU member states sought to prevent Mugabe from entering the EU area. African leaders saw this as an inappropriate interference, arguing that it was not possible to hold a meeting without all African states being represented (Olsen, 2004).

Meanwhile, several events called for a consolidation of EU–Africa relations. At the international level, global inequality and poverty eradication became a priority for the international community, as witnessed by the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the launch of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). At the African level, the adoption of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) provided a platform for foreign donors and investors to work together in support of African development, while the setting up of the African Union further reassured the international community that African leaders wanted to take ownership of their future. At the EU level, the new commitments to boost the volume of aid (including doubling that for Africa), enhance the quality of aid and promote better policy coherence for development, were complemented by the adoption of the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2003) and the European Consensus on Development (European Union, 2006). With all these initiatives, the EU clearly sought to enhance development effectiveness, but at the same time it was attempting to strengthen its profile in the international arena (Carbone, 2007).

Against this background, the EU adopted a strategy for Africa in December 2005 (Council of the European Union, 2005). This document represented the convergence of two views. On the one hand, the European Commission (2005), in a paper produced by Directorate General for Development (DG Development), focused on foreign aid and policy coherence for development as key tools to achieve the MDGs. On the other hand, the Council, in a paper produced by the High Representative for the CFSP, Javier Solana (in 2005), saw the promotion of peace and security in Africa as central to the CFSP.² The EU’s Strategy for Africa received mixed evaluations. True, it represented a remarkable novelty in that it set a framework for a more consistent EU policy towards Africa. Yet, it did not make a qualitative leap because it simply reiterated existing commitments on aid and trade and was adopted with little consultation of relevant stakeholders. Because of this, at the EU–AU Ministerial meeting in Bamako in December 2005 it was agreed to transform the EU’s Strategy for Africa into a partnership between Africa and the EU (European Commission, 2007).

This time the drafting process was more participatory, but the second EU–Africa Summit in December 2007 was once again preceded by a division over the presence of President Mugabe: some EU leaders, including the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, were against his participation, and when it was decided to allow Mugabe to be involved, these leaders decided to pull out. The new Joint Africa–EU Strategy is a much longer and comprehensive document than its predecessor (Council of the European Union, 2007). The starting point was the idea of a ‘new strategic partnership’, in which the two parties would cooperate not only because of a ‘Euro-African consensus on values, common interests and common strategic objectives’, but also because ‘each one expects to benefit from the other’ (Olivier, 2011: 59). The targets were both Africa’s development and the global governance architecture; in particular, the two parties strived to promote peace and security, democratic governance, human rights and people-centered development in Africa, and to address issues of common interest in the international arena through effective multilateralism and a more representative system of global governance. To meet these objectives, a detailed action plan for 2008–10 was adopted, which included eight ‘Africa–EU Partnerships’: peace and security; democratic governance and human rights; trade and regional integration; MDGs; energy; climate change; migration, mobility and employment; science, information society and space. In sum, it seemed that there was hardly any field in which EU and Africa were not meant to cooperate (Schmidt, 2008).

The third Africa–EU Summit held in Tripoli in November 2010, which attracted limited interest by political leaders and the media, recorded a number of disappointments. While a number of observers pointed to the fact that the EU was losing ground vis-à-vis the BRIC group, particularly China (Wissenbach, 2009; Bach, 2010), the emergence of these new actors did not seem to affect the EU’s overall strategy toward the African continent. In fact, the EU did not make new commitments to increase foreign aid. Moreover, the voices of African leaders complaining that trade barriers and agriculture subsidies ‘shamefully’ protected European markets from African products, hindering their ability to trade as equals, remained unheeded (Carbone, 2011). The initial implementation of the First JAES Action Plan produced only cumbersome institutional frameworks meant to consolidate dialogue between the two parties, with a large number of meetings and technical activities often seen as the only indication of success. The issue of peace and security was singled out as one of the few areas in which there was some progress: the EU has been among the key sponsors of Africa-led peace-keeping missions and other mechanisms promoting the AU’s role as a mediator in political and security crises.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Notes on the contributors
• Preface
• Author’s note
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Actors and contexts
• Part III Policies and partnerships
• Part IV Conclusion
• Index