The African Union wants to have a continent-to-continent dialogue with Europe, a change that could make the framework of the Cotonou Agreement implode and leave the Pacific and Caribbean states out in the cold. The 79 countries of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group are due to begin formal negotiations with the European Union on 1 September to redraw the outlines of the Cotonou Agreement. This broad agreement governing relations between the two blocs expires in 2020. But on the eve of the official renegotiation of the partnership begun in 1975, the ACP bloc is questioning its future. “When this cooperation started in 1975, the agreement between the EU and the ACP countries was truly innovative. It was an attempt by European countries to build a partnership with their former colonies, helping them to integrate into the world economy while keeping them close. It was a postcolonial pact,” explains Jean Bossuyt, a specialist on ACP-EU relations at the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM). “But that was 50 years ago. Is this framework still relevant today?” the expert continues. “The ACP group brings together 79 countries that are extremely different, that include both Nigeria and Vanuatu, for example. This group has become too heterogeneous.” On the European side, the wish for maintaining the current framework, which brings together countries from the four corners of the globe, is not obvious. Some countries such as France, Belgium, Italy or Portugal wished to maintain cooperation with the ACP group. But others, such as Germany, Sweden or the Netherlands, called for the ACP framework to end.
Source: euractiv.com