Brussels, 23/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - While the European Commission and the African Union (AU) Commission are determined to strengthen their cooperation on migration and confirmed this in Brussels on Thursday 23 April (see EUROPE 11300), they also confirmed their resolve to tackle “global problems, including social and economic development, climate change, terrorism, violent extremism and transnational crime”.
The common statement adopted at the end of the seventh annual meeting of the two Commissions emphasises global issues. “For the post-2015 development agenda, for example, Africa has its own negotiation position but we are working with the EU because most of the issues are of common interest”, AU Commission President Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told press. She added that “the African continent is not a big greenhouse gas emitter but suffers from the consequences of climate change. We need technologies to clean coal and energy”. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that “the history of the EU and Africa is a long common history between twin continents. It's a real partnership between equals”.
Migration. The two institutions agreed to step up their dialogue and cooperation in three areas - legal immigration and mobility; the prevention of illegal immigration - “especially by strengthening the fight against human trafficking and the trafficking of migrants”; and strengthening synergies between migration and development. This is in order to implement the statement on migration adopted at the EU-Africa summit in April 2014, taking account of the repeat tragedies in the Mediterranean.
Post-2015 sustainable development. The partners will continue to work together to guarantee “an ambitious action-oriented result” at the UN General Assembly in New York in September. They also hope for the conclusion of a new global partnership to implement this post-2015 programme at the Addis Ababa conference (13-16 July). They underline the importance of the mobilisation and effective use of all financial resources, and they give assurances that they will continue to cooperate in order to promote good governance on tax and in the fight against illegal flows of finance.
Climate change. The two parties will step up their strategic dialogue in order to work towards the conclusion of a “transparent, dynamic and legally binding” agreement “with fair and ambitious commitments taken by all parties”. The joint statement refers, for the first time, to low carbon development. Both parties indeed commit to ensuring “the move to economies and societies with low greenhouse gas emissions that are resilient to climate change”, bearing in mind the objective of maintaining the average temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius. The two Commissions will support the development of intended nationally determined contributions (INDC) to the agreement. (Aminata Niang)