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The Commonwealth and the European Union -- partners in principle and in practice -- in Africa and beyond

Date: 12 Sep 2007
Speaker: Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon
Location: Brussels, Belgium

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is truly a great honour to be the first Commonwealth Secretary-General to address the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament.

I warmly thank your Chairman, Mr Saryusz-Wolski, and one of your members, Mr van Orden, for making today possible.

I also thank Mr Kasoulidis, who heads a small and informal Committee on Commonwealth Affairs within the European Parliament.

That group of 20-or-so MEPs plays a very important role in strengthening the links and the understanding between our two organizations.

I stand here as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, but I am more besides.

Above all, I am a democrat and a parliamentarian.

I have been privileged to carry out many roles in public service, but none was more important to me than being, for over 20 years, a Member of Parliament in my home country of New Zealand.

That is why I feel at home today amongst fellow Parliamentarians.

In two weeks time, I shall be making my 7th and final address to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s annual conference in New Delhi – a body of 16,000 Parliamentarians in our 53 Commonwealth countries.

Parliaments are our Commonwealth lifeblood.

Some of you may be familiar with the Commonwealth’s ‘Latimer House Principles’, that define and differentiate the roles of the three branches of Government: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

If the official tasks of the national legislature are to make laws and to make money available … then its unofficial tasks are not to be marginalized by the executive it has created, nor to be muzzled by the judiciary.

I know that you, too, in the supra-national legislature that is the European Parliament, are exercised by the same debates as to where representation and power lie, with more power potentially coming your way under the Reform Treaty.

Wherever I go, I share the message of just, fair, efficient, transparent government – based on representative Parliaments – that betters peoples’ lives.

And that is why the Commonwealth meets the European Union today.

In fact, we meet every day in our overlapping membership.

Cyprus, Malta and the United Kingdom belong to both the Commonwealth and the European Union.

Indeed, Malta has a high profile as our current ‘Chair-in-Office’.

My simple message today is that we two families of nations share the same values, and we are partners not just in principle, but in practice.

Now, I accept that we may look different from the outside.

You the European Union, with 27 countries and nearly half-a-billion people on one continent ….

We the Commonwealth, with 53 countries and just under two billion people, on five continents, and in three oceans.

You, with a huge executive and institutional machinery…

We, with a Secretariat of 300 people…

You, as a fairly uniform economic powerhouse…

We, as home to some of the world’s largest economies, its fastest growing economies, as well as to some of its poorest economies ….

From richest to poorest, from UK to Sierra Leone; from largest to smallest, from billion-strong India to the 10,000 people on the Pacific Island of Tuvalu.

Us both, as organizations based on stated values …

But you, as a relatively homogenous group, with the power of Treaty and legal statute, where sovereignty is increasingly shared…

And we, with the less tangible authority of a commitment to each other, to achieve the same goals individually and collectively.

Further still, we in the Commonwealth have an important power – unique among international organizations – to suspend or even expel members who breach our values.

We suspended Fiji after its military coup in December.

And in the past, we have suspended Pakistan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Our aim is always to assist our members repair the damage and return to the fold.

But I dwell today on what unites us.

As alliances of governments and of peoples…

And as global citizens in a globalizing world, in which we are all, whether we like it or not, inextricably linked …..

A world in which the good things and the bad cross borders and continents with ease.

We both share the overarching principles of Democracy as the manner in which we seek to govern, and of Development – both human and economic – as one of the greatest dividends that Democracy can bring.

As I said, the Commonwealth is present in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

We are almost everywhere, and our multiple memberships advance our collective ideals and interests – here in the EU, as much as anywhere.

Europe, meanwhile, has its own relationships.

You are a global force for good – be it with your nearest neighbours in the Balkans, a little further beyond with the countries around the Mediterranean Sea and west of the Urals, or further afield, in your strategic partnerships with the world’s largest states – in fact, with every region, of whatever significance, across the globe.

I hope you can well see, already, how and where our interests coincide.

But I am talking today of a Commonwealth/EU relationship in practice and not just in principle.

We might, for instance, mention the effectiveness of the combined international stance on Fiji ….

… or we might mention the way our respective election observer groups have kept in such good contact, all over the world.

But at present, I believe there is one place where we can work best together to achieve our common aims: Africa.

18 of our 53 Commonwealth members are in Africa.

Let four African countries illustrate a point.

The last two members to join (Cameroon and Mozambique), and two of those countries which have expressed an interest in joining, (Rwanda and Algeria) are the clearest indication that the ‘British Commonwealth’ came to an end in 1949.

The ‘modern Commonwealth’ of today is a freely associated alliance of equals.

Every person in this room knows the story of a continent with 15% of the world’s population and just 2% of its economic output.

We are all too familiar with the genocide in Darfur, the turmoil in Zimbabwe, and the toll of drought, AIDS and poverty.

Perhaps we are less familiar with the other – far better – side of Africa, which we see especially in Commonwealth Africa.

Commonwealth Africa is in good shape.

11 Commonwealth African countries have made the transition to multi-party democracy over the last 15 years.

Democracy is at work in Africa.

It’s sometimes painful, as we have seen in Sierra Leone this last week with a very close election going to a 2nd round; and it’s sometimes flawed, as we saw – and very publicly said – in Nigeria in May.

But it’s at work.

Democracy is a journey, what I call a ‘work-in-progress’.

Africa is the place where I have most often and most successfully used the discreet, behind-the-scenes work of my Special Envoys and so-called ‘Good Offices’.

From brokering the Mwfaka Accord in Zanzibar…

… to helping establish an independent electoral commission in Cameroon…

… to achieving a revised and more democratic Constitution for Swaziland…:

… the Commonwealth has played an often unsung but invaluable role.

Africa is also the place where the European Union is now in the process of launching a new, joint, EU/AU Africa Strategy.

Giving absolute primacy to the Millennium Development Goals, and conceived around the three levels of ‘the continent’, ‘the regions’ and ‘the individual nations’, the new strategy is based on Africa’s future lying in Africa’s hands, and the EU helping where it can.

It’s an excellent vision, and we warmly welcome it.

I have proposed to President Barroso and Commissioner Michel that the Commonwealth work with you in implementing it, in the area of good and effective governance. The principle is agreed; the details are still to be negotiated.

Why have I done this?

The answer lies in our Commonwealth levels of access, trust, discretion and friendship in Africa – especially at the political level – coupled with our track-record in delivering assistance.

We want to put these things at the disposal of both our European and our African partners in bringing about the new EU/AU strategy.

Because a fellow African expert is the ideal person to work alongside Africans….

We in the Commonwealth have at our disposal thousands of such people.

Just take Ghana, 50 years an independent nation this year, which is exporting its governance talents in Commonwealth projects all over Africa.

The head of its electoral commission, for instance, has helped to prepare and observe elections in Malawi and Kenya…

… while the head of its Human Rights Commission has helped to establish similar bodies across West Africa …

I have just sent a team of Commonwealth officials around six countries in West, East and Southern Africa.

Each country has confirmed that they would like to see the Commonwealth help deliver on the governance aspects of the new strategy.

I shall be discussing their findings with Commissioner Michel in the very near future, and in fact my officials will share them with DG Development this very afternoon.

That’s my first Africa point: I call upon the EU to strengthen its own impact in Africa by making practical use of the breadth and depth of Commonwealth political and technical engagement in Africa.

Because good governance is the prerequisite of development; and its absence undermines development….

My second and final Africa point concerns trade.

I feel I make the point among friends, because the EU and the Commonwealth are currently co-funding an effective project – right across the ACP countries – which puts Commonwealth trade experts into both regional trade bodies and national trade ministries, to help them develop their trade policy management skills and their negotiating capacity.

I have made my trade points repeatedly to Commissioner Mandelson, and I will make them to anyone on behalf of the world’s poorest countries, many of them in the Commonwealth, which need serious help if they are to trade their way out of poverty.

Negotiations for the new Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and the six regions of the ACP are reaching a critical stage.

The politics of managing them are becoming more difficult for both sides.

And the clock is ticking: the EPAs should be concluded by the end of the year.

My colleagues in Africa this last week tell me that they are hearing, even at this late stage, concerns among ACP countries over important areas of divergence:

· for instance, about the adjustment time for the sugar proposals, and the compensation offered for those affected by them.

· about the inclusion of rules on trade in services and on investment that go beyond what they have committed to negotiating in the WTO.

· about rules-of-origin proposals that are becoming more stringent.

ACP countries want the provision of additional financial resources, both as a distinct part of the EPA package, and to finance adjustment.

And they are concerned, too, that a link is being drawn on the EU side between the completion of the EPAs and the funding levels of the next European Development Fund.

Remember: the EPAs will be a fundamental building block of the whole partnership between the peoples of Europe and Africa – and the rest of the ACP – well into the future.

They are not ‘just another trading arrangement’.

Time will be the real judge, but the yardstick will be the positive and enduring character of the Agreements, and their contribution to the elimination of the blight of poverty.

Trade is the way that Africa will turn its statistics on their head, and – in its trade negotiations – the EU has, within its capacity, the chance to transform that continent.

If the Doha Development Agenda continues to stall, and if the EPAs aren’t delivered on time, it’s the harsh political reality that the EU will shoulder much of the blame, whether that is warranted or not.

And none of us want that.

For Africa’s sake – indeed, for the world’s – let us, the EU and the Commonwealth, stand together.

Today I ask you to bring the Commonwealth further into your thinking.

Let the Commonwealth Committee in the Parliament guide you, and let the Commonwealth Secretariat help you.

The Commonwealth and the European Union: ‘Shared beliefs; partners in principle, and in practice’.

Thank you.

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