1. Political Overview

  Since its earliest incarnations as the Treaty of Rome Association and the two Yaoundé Conventions, Europe's relations with first Africa, then the Caribbean and Pacific states have been highly political. But they were not solely political relationships. In fact, they survived the turmoil of decolonisation of the 1960s and the stress of nearly forty years of the Cold War by maintaining a low public political profile. Thus officially the Lomé Conventions in the 1970s and 1980s were politically neutral, aligned neither to East nor West.

  But of course the European Community really was part of the West and signing Lomé always meant some degree of alliance or openness to the West. But by remaining overtly focused on a simple job—development—the Lomé Convention avoided most contentious political issues and maximised its strength. Because of its low political profile Lomé can be called the "discreet entente".

  In general, politics is not the strong suit of the European Union. The EU is widely known as a political pygmy but economic giant. It has no foreign policy, as Commissioner Oreja recently recognised, worth the name.¹ Thus, if there is an argument for the EU to play to its strength, this lies in development co-operation rather than high politics.

  Former European Commission Director General Dieter Frisch recently warned against making Lomé from a development agreement into a fully political agreement, and I would support that view.² After all, the record of the EU in political dialogues in Algeria, the Middle East Peace Process, the Euro-Arab Dialogue, Bosnia, is even more patchy than the results of the Lomé Convention. The danger is that in making Lomé too political, it loses its development content.

2. Conflict Prevention or Quagmire?

  One of the new "lines of attack" in Lomé recently described by the Director General of DG VIII, Philip Lowe, is to strengthen the political aspects of Lomé—including conflict prevention. Of course preventing conflicts, promoting peace and stability are wonderful objectives. But is the EU a good instrument for conflict prevention? What expertise does it have? The record here is not encouraging. The EU's role in former Yugoslavia is usually held up as an example of what not to do to prevent conflicts. Neither Chechnya, Albania, Algeria, Cyprus or even Northern Ireland stand as examples of successful conflict prevention.

  In general, conflict prevention is new to Lomé. It is a more overtly political goal than Lomé previously encompassed. That means it is expanding Lomé's field of action when one of the most repeated pleas of development specialists is to reduce Lomé's scope.

  Another issue is the sheer intractability, not to mention expense of African conflicts in particular. Edward Mortimer in the Financial Times wrote recently as if promoting human rights and stability in Eastern Europe through enlarging the EU and solving Africa's conflicts through the Lomé Convention were of the same order of difficulty.³

  French policy in central Africa may well have exacerbated rather than quelled the conflicts in that region. What guarantee is there that EU policy would be better? It might be that the EU would just be landed with the unenviable job of replacing (or paying for) French and Belgian troops.

  I would suggest that conflict prevention—which has after all a military aspect as well as an ngo aspect—would fit much better under the rubric of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy—which has not much content—than under the Lomé policy—which already has by general agreement too much content. Alternatively other non-Lomé organizations, such as the UN or the OAU, might be better placed for conflict prevention and could receive EU funds for that purpose.

  Here again we could recall the Stabex system in particular which was brought in as the highlight of Lomé I. It was supposed to solve the ACP countries' commodity earnings problems. Yet 20 years on Stabex seems about to disappear like the Titanic, virtually without a trace. If the EU has not adequately dealt with the problems of the ACP countries' commodity sectors, with issues of the environment or gender, taking on conflict prevention as a major new theme may not be desirable. Conflict prevention may be the new Stabex-style highlight of the post-Lomé accords, but it needs to be seen as a complex issue. Adding some conflict prevention projects to existing types of projects where appropriate is reasonable, but changing the principal character of Lomé from development to conflict prevention and peace-keeping is to risk a general failure.

3. ACP Solidarity and the Libreville Declaration

  At the November 1997 ACP Summit Meeting in Gabon, the ACP Heads of State and Government agreed the Libreville Declaration. In this document the ACP countries agreed to re-intensify their cooperation and solidarity as a group. It appeared to me that Commission officials at the meeting, including Mr. Santer and Professor Pinheiro, were surprised by the strength of feeling among the ACP that they wanted to continue to exist and work as a group.

  At this meeting Commissioner Pinheiro recognized or accepted the ACP will to maintain their cohesion, but said that the Commission would still seek separate regional or sub-regional agreements with the ACP, i.e., more differentiation. Thus the Commission is trying to have its cake and eat it too—formally giving in to the ACP desire to stay together as a group but in practice increasing the differences between them

  Whether the ACP Group—traditionally rather fragile—can withstand the proposals for greater differentiation remains to be seen.

4. Lomé: the unfashionability problem

  Since the signing of Lomé IV in 1989—and even before—the Lomé Convention has suffered from an unfashionable image. Adopting the EU Commission's viewpoint, The Economist predicted that after the Year 2000, Lomé would exist in name only, replaced by bilateral or regional agreements.⁴

  It has also become fashionable to decry the old Lomé as `status quo' or `conservative'. Among the principal architects of the new post-Lomé system there are calls for a "a totally new partnership", but ironically these calls repeat almost verbatim the same language which accompanied the signing of Lomé I in 1975.

  One of the principal tools of political science is comparison, and a useful comparison to the Lomé structure is the Commonwealth. Like Lomé the Commonwealth grew out of postcolonial relations. And like Lomé the Commonwealth has suffered at times (notably at the end of the 1960s and more recently under the previous Conservative government) from unfashionability. Nevertheless, recently the Commonwealth has enjoyed a remarkable revival with countries like Rwanda, Yemen and Israel seeking admission.

  As is the case with the Commonwealth, much of the strength of the Lomé structure lies in its durability, its predictability. If the Commonwealth members of the last decade had radically reorganized their organisation—splitting the Indian subcontinent members from the Pacific or African—changing its rationale, it would be unlikely to enjoy the popularity it does today.

  Of course Lomé needs revisions, streamlining, and improvement. But major changes which divert Lomé from its original development aims and pan-regional structure should be considered carefully.

5. Potential Beneficiaries

  If the EU goes ahead with the plan to divide the ACP into regional groupings, this will have the effect of making each regional grouping less significant and less visible than the whole bloc of 71. In the Caribbean region this could create an opportunity for the EU to expand Lomé membership to help some of the poorest countries of the Western Hemisphere, notably Cuba and Nicaragua.

Notes

1. Marcelino Oreja, Public Letter, Brussels, European Commission, 5. XI, 97.

  2. Dieter Frisch, "The political dimension of Lomé", The Courier, Brussels, no. 166, November-December 1977.

  3. Edward Mortimer, "New World Order?", Financial Times, 14 January, 1988, p.30.

  4. "Wanted: some African tigers", The Economist, 30 November, 1996, p.77.

Dr Marjorie Lister

University of Bradford

23 January 1998