Brussels, 20/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - On a visit to Brussels, Moussa Toure, President of the WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union) was received on Tuesday by EP President Nicole Fontaine before meeting European Commission President Romano Prodi on Wednesday. The aim of the visit was to brief European institutions on the plan to create a parliament for the WAEMU and to bolster the acquis of this African regional organisation in the framework of the Cotonou Agreement. At the end of talks, Nicole Fontaine reiterated before the press the European Parliament's support for the WAEMU, support she had already expressed in January at the organisations' headquarters, in Burkina Faso. "This visit by Mr. Toure is an extension of my visit to Ouagadougou, where I was invited for the seventh anniversary of the WAEMU. For a long time now, we have wanted to strengthen our ties with the Africans. The WAEMU is an exemplary organisation demonstrating the effort at integrating the regional dimension, that Parliament would like to encourage. Our talks were fruitful, notably, regarding the idea of setting up a WAEMU parliament, called upon to take over for the current inter-parliamentary committee. We shall continue to have talks on ways of implementing the Cotonou Agreement, in the perspective of establishing a enhanced partnership between African countries and the European Union, and in particular the European Parliament". Moussa Toure, for his part, paid tribute to the EP (having taken part in its mini-session), declaring "Beyond discussions on important issues, I greatly appreciated the popular nature of this session, marked by a strong presence of citizens of the Union. That will inspire us, so that our populations may intervene and live the life of Parliament".
The WAEMU brings together eight countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo). Active since 1996, the WAEMU has the benefit of a financing convention in the framework of cooperation with the Union. The current convention, the second of its type, amounts to 52 billion FCFA (against the initial 9 billion).