Coordinated multilateral cooperation is one of the priorities of EU leaders to combat the impact of the war in Ukraine on the most vulnerable countries, according to the draft conclusions of the EU Summit (see EUROPE 12960/5).
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, confirmed this on Monday 30 May, at the opening of the Summit, by announcing that the President of Senegal and current President of the African Union, Macky Sall, will be invited on Tuesday 31 May to address the leaders of the EU27 on this subject.
“Tomorrow, Macky Sall will address the European Council on behalf of the African Union”, Mr Michel told the press on his arrival at the Summit. According to him, “it is Russia’s war on Ukraine that poses a serious risk to global food security. It is the EU’s responsibility to take care of ourselves and also the developing countries”.
Mr Sall’s speech will help “to show this interactivity that we want, especially with African countries”, stressed the President of the European Council.
According to the latest draft conclusions, dated 30 May, the European Council should “invite the Commission to explore the possibility of mobilising reserves from the European Development Fund to support the most affected partner countries”.
“In its 2021 report on the State of Food and Nutritional security in the World, the FAO counts 282 million undernourished people in Africa”, Macky Sall expressed with alarm on 27 May at the African Union’s extraordinary summit on the humanitarian situation in Africa, hosted in Equatorial Guinea.
However, unlike the EU, the African Union refuses to condemn Russia and advocates dialogue to stop the war. In this spirit, Mr Sall announced on 22 May his intention to visit Russia and Ukraine in the near future.
On his arrival at the Summit, High Representative of the Union Josep Borrell described the question of food security as “an issue of enormous importance”. “It is obvious that Russia is using wheat as a weapon, as a weapon of war. We are currently looking at how to get the 20 million tonnes of Ukrainian wheat out. It’s not easy - this clearly requires an agreement with Russia to use the sea route”, he said, arguing that Russia could not starve the world.
Furthermore, according to the draft conclusions, the European Council stresses the importance of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the EU’s contribution to food security and calls for the “swift adoption” of the CAP strategic plans.
See the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/1uu (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)