Heads of state and government to the second European Union (EU)-Africa Summit, which closed in Lisbon on Sunday, endorsed a joint strategy aimed at a new partnership between the two continents.

 

Heads of delegations for the EU-Africa summit (L to R) Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, Burkina Faso's Blaisse Compaore, Bulgaria's President Georgi Parvanov, Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi and Pan-African Parliament President Gertrude Mongela of Tanzania stand for a family photo in Lisbon, Dec. 8, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

 

Four main objectives are included in the joint strategy, with reinforcing and elevating the EU-Africa political partnership as the priority. The partnership envisages strengthening institutional ties and addressing common challenges, especially peace and security, migration and development, as well as environment protection.

 

The joint strategy also ensures that all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be met in all African countries by the year 2015 while strengthening and promoting peace, security, sustainable economic development, regional and continental integration in Africa.

 

The two sides vowed to jointly promote and sustain a system of effective multilateralism, with strong, representative and legitimate institutions, and the reform of the United Nations system and of other key international institutions, and to address global challenges and common concerns such as human rights, fair trade, migration and climate change.

 

The joint strategy also highlights efforts to facilitate and promote a broad-based and wide-ranging people-centered partnership.

 

Africa and the EU will empower non-state actors and create conditions to enable them to play an active role in development, conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction processes.

 

Both sides will promote holistic approaches to development processes, and make this joint strategy a permanent platform for information, participation and mobilization of a broad spectrum of civil society actors in the EU, Africa and beyond.

 

To achieve the four main objectives, both the EU and the African countries will be dedicated to move away from a traditional relationship and forge a real partnership characterized by equality and the pursuit of common objectives.

 

Positive experiences should be built on and lessons be learned from the past relationship where successful mechanisms and instruments have been applied in specific policy areas and learn from shortcomings in other areas, according to the document.

 

The strategy demands that the Europeans and the Africans promote more accurate images of each other and encourage mutual understanding between the peoples and cultures of the continents.

 

Starting from the Lisbon summit, meetings of the heads of state and government will be organized every three years.

 

The political visibility of the new partnership will also require political engagement and commitment of the leaders of Africa and the EU in the period between the summits. At the same time, bilateral dialogue should be maintained through regular meetings of senior officials and ministers.

 

The joint strategy, which provides a long-term policy framework for Africa-EU relations, will be implemented through successive Action Plans which will build on the operational part of this joint strategy and cover proposed priority actions for three years.

 

The first action plan will be adopted in Lisbon, covering the period up to the next summit. These action plans will identify the main political priorities, as well as the policy commitments, programs and actions that will be needed to achieve them.

 

The action plans will allow heads of state and government to, on a regular basis, assess the success and failure of implementation in key areas and, if necessary, provide a new political impetus.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2007)