EU - European Union

The Polish memory of oppression, occupation, the holocaust, Nazi occupation, and communist dictators is burned into the national soul and conscience. A Polish born Pope, Jean Paul II, supported the long national struggle for freedom, giving faith to Poland’s 38 million citizens, mainly Catholic. Freedom turned into a national treasure. Membership of the European Union, achieved in May 2004, promised a path towards social justice, wealth, and global acceptance of their abused homela ...

Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission has placed Africa at the heart of the European Union’s external action strategy, signaling to Washington, Moscow, and Beijing that the “geopolitical commission”[1] intends to carve itself a genuine place in the current rivalry for world leadership. Von der Leyen’s first trip abroad as European Commission president was to the institutional heart of Africa, in Addis Ababa, where she met African leaders and vowed that Africa and Europe wi ...

Over 25 years after the launch of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) in the 1995 Barcelona Conference, the Mediterranean geographical area continues to be subject to the reflection and conceptualisation of the European Union (EU) with the aim of firmly establishing this strategic neighbourhood relationship and addressing the progress of the inherent challenges. Since then, several initiatives have marked the Euro-Mediterranean framework as stages on the pat ...

The proposal for a European Union New Pact on Migration and Asylum, submitted by the European Commission on September 23, 2020, for approval by the European Parliament and the European Council, aims to provide a comprehensive response to the challenges posed to EU countries by migration and asylum. It is another step in the politically toxic attempts to reconcile the many fractures dividing Europe around the issue of migration: between the Mediterranean countries of first arrival of ...

On the eve of the final negotiations on ‘‘future relations’’, an agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) seems likely. First of all, London sees American support vanishing: unlike Donald Trump, President-elect Joe Biden is against Brexit. He announced that a USA-United Kingdom trade agreement would be ruled out if a ‘‘hard border’’ was re-established between the two Irelands. However, this is precisely what an exit without an agreement would imply: Northern ...

La crise du Covid-19 a fortement entravé les négociations d'un accord de libre-échange entre le Royaume-Uni et l'Union européenne (UE). Étant condamnée à des obstacles, à la fois temporels et politiques, la perspective de parvenir à un accord avant le départ prévu du Royaume-Uni du marché unique de l'UE le 31 décembre 2020, semble de plus en plus compliquée. Londres et Bruxelles devraient considérer une sortie du Royaume- Uni sans accord comme une conclusion indésirable des négociat ...

Depuis l'entrée en vigueur de l'Accord de libre-échange (ALE) entre le Maroc et l'Union européenne (UE), il y a près de deux décennies, les performances des exportations marocaines vers les marchés de l'UE ont été plutôt décevantes, tandis que le déficit commercial du Maroc avec l'UE a augmenté de manière significative. Cela a conduit de nombreux observateurs à percevoir l'accord d'un oeil critique. Cependant, les balances commerciales bilatérales ne sont pas toujours suffisantes po ...

In the upcoming months, European Union (EU) member states and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) are expected to adopt a new agreement that will replace the existing Cotonou framework due to expire by February 2020. The ACP Group and the EU respectively adopted the mandates of negotiations in May and June 2018. The beginning of negotiations was scheduled one year earlier but was delayed due to diverging positions on the matter of migration. Consequently, the formal adopt ...

Twenty years after negotiations began between Mercosur and the European Union (EU), a trade agreement between ministers was reached last Friday in Brussels. Its first phase, from 1999 to 2014, had among the motivations on the European side not to be left behind while the US then pursued a Free Trade Agreement for Latin America (FTAA). Symptomatically, such enthusiasm cooled after FTAA negotiations came to a halt and the United States embarked on bilateral agreements with some c ...

The author is an alumnus of the 2018 Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program As European citizens wake up on Monday morning, democracy is alive and well in Europe. Voter turnout increased to 50,5% compared to with 42,6% in 2014, the highest for two decades as voters across the continent responded to the populist threat. Anti-EU, populist and nationalist parties have seen gains (around 115 seats) and as a committed European i am saddened to see more voters turn t ...

On the eve of Britain’s exit from the European Union, the country is redefining its international approach. The United Kingdom has already taken action by becoming involved in new economic commitments, new trade agreements in Commonwealth countries but also from a diplomatic point of view in West Africa. While development aid remains a focal point of its intervention in Africa, it risks being undermined by the Brexit and its economic consequences. However, the United Kingdom is now ...

- The trade agreements that the European Union has with North African countries – with Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia – are often seen as having delivered disappointing results since they came into force during the 2000s. The four North African countries have seen insufficient growth in their exports to the EU, and have undergone only limited diversification. In the meantime, the EU’s exports to North Africa have grown quite rapidly. - Economic growth in North Africa has been ...

Nowadays, links between development and security are widely recognized by many, just as they were during the development of the Marshall Plan. As mentioned in the United Nations "A More Secure World" report, threats to one are intrinsically a threat to all. Thus, 17 UN-agreed goals were agreed upon to help end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all by 2030, including goal 16 for "peaceful and inclusive societies". Last month, the UN’s inaugural Africa Dialogue S ...

With the reshaping of relations between the EU and the ACP countries (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific), and the expected revision of the ACP-EU agreement in 2020, it is essential to re-visit the framework of key partnerships between Europe and Africa and to propose efficient collaborative strategies to enhance relations. This book explores the various areas of cooperation for the renewal of African-European partnerships, notably in fields such as education, the creation of jobs for yo ...

Since 2015 and the refugee crisis, the dialogue between the European Union (EU) and African countries on migration issues has assumed a new intensity. The EU, wishing to put an end to irregular arrivals in the central Mediterranean and increase the number of returning irregular migrants, proposed a new partnership framework with third countries in the wake of the March 2016 agreement with Turkey. This partnership framework is specifically aimed at African countries, as countries of ...

President Trump’s proclamation that, because of national security concerns, he will apply a 25% tariff on all steel and a 10% tariff on all aluminium imports into the United States – except provisionally and dependent on NAFTA negotiations those from Canada and Mexico – affects, respectively 5.1 billion Euros and 1.1 billion Euros of EU exports. These are not trivial sums. However, the invocation of the national security exception in this case has implications that go far beyond nar ...

« Revise, Reboot, Rebuild : Strategies for a time of Distrust »: that was this year’s theme for the Brussels Forum, a yearly high-level conference held from March 8th to 10th by the US think tank German Marshall Fund (GMF), partner of the OCP Policy Center who attended the event through its delegation. This meeting of some 400 policymakers, academics and private sector operators is reviewing the relationship between Europe and the United States. Brexit, the Trump administration ...

Africa is the new frontier of a global energy transition during a century in which people are rightfully preoccupied by climate change and sustainable development. Energy access in Africa can be reached through unity within and across the continent. Eliminating the obstacles of the historical divisions of the continent – whether linguistic, economic, or geographic – would foment investments and development aid. The African Union would be best equipped to reallocate and redistribute ...

This policy brief reviews the recently published EU Global Strategy, highlighting its main strengths and weaknesses as well as innovations, starting with the concept of resilience. It argues that the document has many strengths for being a compromise text written at a time of deep uncertainty about the EU's own future. The brief also comments on the future of EU-Morocco relations in the new framework. It notes that the strategy perhaps missed an opportunity to reaffirm European-Moro ...