3rd Launch of EU-South Africa Summit
European Council President van Rompuy, Commission President Barroso and South Africa’s President Zuma launched the 3rd South Africa Summit today in Brussels. As the only African G 20 member and the EU’s largest trading partner in Africa, South Africa is of crucial political but also economic importance for the EU’s external relations policy towards the African continent.
Today’s meeting focused on the negotiations on the European Partnership Agreement with South Africa, which shall be concluded until the end of this year, as well as on the upcoming 2nd EU-Africa summit that will be launched in Libya. In the press conference concluding the summit, van Rompuy stressed the importance of South Africa’s lead in the preparation of this summit. According to Rompuy, the Joint EU-Africa Strategy is of utmost importance as it pursues economic development, good governance as well as transparency within the African continent.
Commission President Barroso pointed once again to last week’s United Nations Millennium Development Goal Summit that took place in New York. He reemphasised the EU’s strong commitment to the development of the world’s poorest countries and stressed the importance of actively pursuing possibilities of growth, such as trade. The issue of climate change was also on the agenda of today’s meeting, however, no significant negotiations on the different viewpoints have taken place between the two partners.
The press conference was preceded by the signing ceremony of the largest EU budget support programme to South Africa, the ‘Primary Education Sector Policy Support Programme’ amounting to more than €122 million. Signatories were European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou and the South African Minister for Basic Education, Angie Motshekga.
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