The 28 European development ministers will take stock in Brussels on Tuesday 22 May of progress on the draft negotiating mandate on the post-2020 partnership between the EU and the 79 countries of the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) group, which will replace the Cotonou Agreement when it expires in February 2020.
This discussion is not expected to be more than an update, the matter not even having been discussed by the member state ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) when they met last week, to prepare for the ministerial meeting.
The EU aim is to agree on a negotiating mandate at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting on 28 May, as the member state ambassadors said on Tuesday 15 May. They noted, nonetheless, that further consultations were needed and that they would take place before next week’s Coreper meeting.
The main points of the mandate, outlined by the Commission, have already been the subject of numerous ministerial discussions: the new agreement, based on common values and better adapted to the challenges of the 21st century, will comprise an over-arching agreement with the ACP group as a whole and will be complemented by regional agreements with Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
The ACP countries also hope to reach agreement on their own negotiating mandate on 28 May, at the 107th meeting of the ACP Council of Ministers in Lomé (Togo). This ACP ministerial meeting will be followed by a joint ACP-EU Ministerial Council in the Togolese capital on 31 May and 1 June.
Both parties have made good progress in their respective preparations. Time is now of the essence as negotiations are due to begin in August.
The ACP countries, which are keen to preserve what has been achieved by the ACP-EU partnership, fully intend to maintain their unity in a legally binding agreement of crucial importance to the pursuit of sustainable development goals by each of the countries and supplemented by agreements based on the regional integration that is taking place, as Jamaican Prime Minister and current chair of the ACP Council Andrew Holness said when he addressed the ACP’s Committee of Ambassadors on 17 April. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)