Cotonou partnerschap EU-ASC landen uitgebreid met anti-discriminatie plannen, klimaatverandering en strijd tegen AIDS (en)
The Spanish Secretary of State for Cooperation, Soraya Rodríguez, expressed
her ‘great satisfaction’ at the improvement of the partnership, after
chairing the meeting on behalf of the twenty-seven Member States, along with
Gabon’s Deputy Minister for the Economy, Trade, Industry and Tourism, Paul
Bunduku-Latha, on behalf of the 78 ACP states.
In his opinion, the inclusion of new articles after ‘ten months of intense
negotiations’ on matters such as the fight against AIDS, climate change and
discrimination, mean that the Cotonou Agreement is ‘up to global
challenges’.
Furthermore, it reaffirms the commitment to attaining the Millennium
Development Goals and introduces important links between security and
development, ‘as well as highly constructive commitments as regards food
safety, the fisheries sector and the productive sector, and vital elements
for achieving the social and economic development which we are jointly
working towards’, Ms Rodríguez stressed.
The European Commission has negotiated this document on behalf of the EU,
and the European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs i, stressed
that it has made ‘significant’ progress on discrimination, an area in which
it has been difficult to achieve consensus on the rights of homosexuals.
Ultimately, in this regard the document has been based on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Another sticking point was the part on immigration, on which both sides will
have to continue working until the document is signed definitively in
Burkina Faso in June 2010.
On this matter, the deputy minister from Gabon highlighted that ‘there is an
overall commitment and the detail is not so important’.
He was very pleased with the ‘progress’ made on these matters ‘despite the
obstacles’ and the difficulty of getting the large number of countries
involved to agree.
‘We have achieved commitment on the three main pillars of the Cotonou
Agreement: institutional policy, the trade and economic area and
development,’ he stressed.
In his opinion, with this second five-yearly revision of the agreement ‘the
ACP states will improve the impact of measures taken against poverty’.