Brussels, Belgium
European Union-African Union Summit, 17-18 February 2022
Main points of the agenda
The leaders of the EU and the AU, together with those of their respective Member States, will meet for the
sixth European Union-African Union Summit , which will take place in Brussels on 17 and 18 February 2022.
The summit will be a unique opportunity to lay the foundations for a renewed and deepened
partnership between the AU and the EU benefiting from political commitment at the highest level based on trust and a clear understanding of our mutual interests. Leaders are expected to discuss how the two continents can
boost prosperity .The aim is to launch an ambitious
Africa-Europe investment package taking into account global challenges such as climate change and the current health crisis. They are also expected to discuss tools and solutions to promote
stability and security through a renewed architecture for peace and security.
Several thematic round tables will also be organised. The following topics will be discussed:
- Growth financing
- Health systems and vaccine production
- Agriculture and sustainable development
- Education, culture and vocational training, migration and mobility
- Private sector support and economic integration
- Peace, security and governance
- Climate change and energy transition, digital [connectivity and infrastructure] and transport
EU and AU Heads of State or Government will participate in the roundtables along with a selected group of guests who are experts in their respective fields.
A joint declaration on a
common vision for 2030 should be adopted by the participants.
Source :
Sommet Union européenne‑Union africaine, 17-18 février 2022
N.B
Expectations for a successful EU-AU Summit in Brussels on 17-18 February. Africa welcomed the announcement by President von der Leyen of a Global Gateway Africa-Europe Investment Package worth €150 billion.
Jutta Urpilainen, the European Union commissioner for international partnerships. Photo by: Lukasz Kobus / European Union
The European Union’s development chief says national governments need to put up more money to make the debut of Europe’s answer to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative a success.
“It's not the team without team members,” Jutta Urpilainen, EU commissioner for international partnerships, said in an interview with Devex this week. “In order to really have a ‘Team Europe’ initiative, we need to have coordination, but we also need to get financial contributions from the member states.”
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The
European Commission aims to use next week’s summit between leaders from the EU and African Union to showcase its Global Gateway scheme, intended to
mobilize up to €300 billion of investment abroad, with a focus on green and digital infrastructure. To reach that projected figure, however, Urpilainen said the commission needs EU states to supplement Brussels’ financing.
Koen Doens, the head of the international partnerships department at the commission, has been meeting with the development heads from EU national bureaucracies for more than a year to assemble a list of joint priorities — so-called Team Europe initiatives, or TEIs — covering support to small businesses, energy, migration, health, and more.
There are now around 150 TEIs in various stages of completion, and a handful of “flagships” will feature in
an investment package to be unveiled at next week’s summit.
Amid tension over African calls for an
intellectual property waiver for
COVID-19 vaccines and doubts over
European support for natural gas on the continent, the overall financing will also be closely watched as a test of whether the EU’s proposed new partnership with Africa goes beyond
the usual warm words. Last month, Senegalese President Macky Sall
called for a significant investment package.
Doens wrote to officials from EU countries in mid-January, underlining the “crucial” point that of the €20 billion in grants that Europe provides to Africa each year, €6.4 billion comes from the commission and €13.6 billion from member states bilaterally. “In other words: if we only look at Flagship TEI from the perspective of EU funding, we are only showcasing 1/3 of what Team Europe represents,” Doens wrote.
That was followed by an email last week, saying that “over the past weeks, the level of political commitment in Member States on these flagships has been mixed.”
Doens wrote that “Whilst some of them have mustered strong political commitment, such as those related to human capital (health and education), others have not gathered such support yet.”
He added, “That is notably the case of proposed flagships related to infrastructure in energy, digital and transport, three priority investment areas of Global Gateway and of strategic importance to our African partners.”
The latest draft investment package, to be discussed by EU states in Brussels on Friday, states that future funding commitments “are not yet determined and depend on Member States’ yearly national budgetary processes.”
But synchronizing budgets is not the only snag.
“To really have a ‘Team Europe’ initiative, we need to have coordination, but we also need to get financial contributions from the member states.”
— Jutta Urpilainen, EU commissioner for international partnerships Diplomats told Devex that other factors affecting member states’ support included the varying state of readiness of the plans, preexisting member state presence on the ground, the higher amount of promotion for some initiatives, and some donors’ lack of experience with infrastructure investments, as well as the complexity of multicountry regional TEIs and how to govern them.
