EU-Africa summit kicks off as Brussels seeks new ties

German leader Chancellor Angela Merkel chats with President Jakaya Kikwete at the 4th European Union-Africa Summit in Brussels, Belgium, yesterday. President Kikwete arrived in Brussels for the two-day summit. PHOTO | STATE HOUSE 

By  Daniel Kalinaki ,The Citizen Correspondent

In Summary

The EU has set October as the deadline for a deal on the controversial Economic Partnerships Agreement between it and Africa but civil society activists, who turned out in the spring sunshine in Brussels to demonstrate outside the summit venue, show that agreement and consensus are yet to be achieved.

Brussels. With helicopters circling overhead, snipers lurking on the rooftops, sirens baring through the streets, and terse military police manning barbed-wire fortifications, European and African leaders kicked off their two-day summit in Brussels yesterday, seeking to renew a valuable relationship under threat from new suitors.

A stronger show of force was underway thousands of miles away in the Central African Republic (CAR), where the European Union launched a military operation to end the political instability in the country that the UN warns threatens to spiral into religious extremism and potential violence.

Details of the size of the EU force deployed to CAR were not immediately available but officials in Brussels said it had a short-term mandate with a view to handing over to a peacekeeping force from the African Union or the UN.

“The launch of this operation demonstrates the EU’s determination to take full part in international efforts to restore stability and security in Bangui and right across the Central African Republic,” Ms Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy and security in-charge, said.

The military operation in CAR is only the latest in a growing list of EU interventions in Africa, following a French-led intervention in Mali, counter-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa and the Nato-led attacks in Libya that dislodged Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The attack on Gaddafi, who had hosted the last EU-Africa summit only a year before his death, sparked renewed claims of African nationalism and calls for “African solutions to African problems”.

However, such solutions have been slow in coming and, the EU has grown increasingly more visible in its military engagements, although Brussels is keen to present its activities as partnerships with the African Union.

The EU has contributed more than Euros 1.2 billion to peace-building efforts across the continent through the Africa Peace Facility since 2004 and sees gunboat and helicopter diplomacy as key to maintaining close relations.

Amidst growing interest in Africa from China, America and other emerging economies, the EU has put on a charm offensive, seeking to overcome its colonial legacy and emerge as Africa’s “partner”, perhaps the most popular word in the bureaucratic corridors in Brussels.

“There are things on which Europe needs Africa,” Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said Wednesday during the opening of the summit, pointing to climate change and migration.

Manuel Barroso, his counterpart from the European Commission, was more saccharine, speaking of “a partnership based on mutual respect, a partnership of equals”, but tough discussions lie ahead.

Migration – in particular the EU’s treatment of illegal migrants seeking economic refuge on the continent – has emerged as a potential sore point, with Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, and Human Rights Watch calling for more humane treatment of those who undertake the often perilous pilgrimages from poverty.