Foreign policy and EU-Africa relations: From the European security strategy to the EU global strategy

Abstract

In November 2017 the fifth EU-Africa summit took place in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. It presented an opportunity to showcase the EU’s ‘new’ approach to international affairs, the Global Strategy (2016). As the most recent contribution to the EU’s foreign policy framework there has been a burgeoning body of analysis considering its content (what has changed, and what has stayed the same). But what does the Global Strategy really mean for the EU’s external relations? The challenge of foreign policy is that what is set out in rhetoric often finds a different form in practice. This chapter argues that it is the divergence between the stated EU foreign policy principles and what happens in practice that has resulted in cooling EU-Africa relations. Even where policy priorities convergence, as in the role of multilateralism in the promotion of principles and norms, in practice the EU and AU differ on how this should be approached. While the EU Global Strategy looks to reconcile foreign policy gaps through ‘principled pragmatism’, given the inward-looking nature of the strategy and the AU’s own emphasis on developing its international agency, EU-AU relations will continue to be adrift.