On Thursday 27 May, the European Foreign Ministers will meet in Lisbon for a Gymnich with a busy agenda.
The ministers will start their informal meeting with a political discussion on EU-Africa relations with a view to strengthening the EU’s strategic engagement with African partners. This discussion will take place in the run-up to the sixth EU-African Union Summit, which is expected to lead to a strengthened strategic political and economic partnership based on shared values and mutual commitments to address common challenges.
This EU/AU summit, which was supposed to take place in 2020, has been postponed due to the coronavirus. It has been the subject of intense preparation and consultation. The Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council recently organised the EU-Africa High Level Forum on Green Investment in cooperation with the European Investment Bank (see EUROPE 12705/20).
The Gymnich will also address unresolved conflicts in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. The ministers will discuss the EU’s involvement in the transformation and resolution processes for these conflicts.
The role of the EU in the Indo-Pacific region will also be discussed, including the implementation of the EU strategy on the Indo-Pacific (see EUROPE 12702/17). The High Representative of the Union, Josep Borrell, will visit the South East Asia region in the coming days, in particular to present the EU strategy.
At lunch, the ministers will meet their Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi, to discuss the situation in the Near East and the EU’s renewed partnership with the southern neighbourhood (see EUROPE 12654/8).
On the evening of Thursday 26 May, and again on Friday 27 May, it will be the European Defence Ministers’ turn to meet in Lisbon. During their dinner, they will discuss the latest developments in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy.
On Friday, the ministers will meet representatives of African regional organisations as well as the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations to discuss the EU-Africa partnership on peace and security. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant and Aminata Niang)