25 years of troubled EU-AU relations: Breaking the cycle of summit rituals

Consecutive AU-EU summits have followed a similar ritual. In the weeks leading up to the summit, a handful of EU civil servants of the European Commission and the European External Action Service hold the pen in writing an ambitious joint vision or summit declaration to be adopted during the summit. Flowery language – as seen in an early version of the Joint Declaration – should convince both the EU and the AU commissions, together with the heads of state of the 27 EU and 55 AU member states, that this is “a unique and strategic relationship that has steadily deepened in scope, ambition, and political significance”. 

Long-standing underlying causes of tension in the relationship are skillfully concealed behind empty slogans of equality, shared values and common interests. This tends to perpetuate the perception that these summits operate in a parallel universe – one where political sensitivities are set aside in favour of diplomatic comfort.

Close to the date of the summits, some space is created for costly and poorly prepared side events of think tanks, civil society, youth and business organisations. These aim to create the illusion of ‘broad-based consultations’ that should legitimise the summit outcomes.

To seal all this, the EU promises an impressive but rather vague financial package of a few hundred billion euros, for which the EU expects African loyalty to European proposals.

This choreography, repeated approximately every three years, no longer works. Former French and EU top diplomat Pierre Vimont recently observed: “Things have gone worse. We don’t understand each other. We don’t speak the same narrative”.

The EU can no longer claim to be Africa’s unique partner. The AU and its member states have rapidly diversified their foreign relations in the past decades. Several countries of the recently enlarged BRICS group have expanded their influence in Africa. After South Africa, other African countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, have joined this club. Also, the G20 Summit in Johannesburg on 22-23 November appears to generate more excitement in the AU and Africa than the AU-EU summit, which will take place the following day in Luanda.

Moving beyond the Global Gateway towards a stronger political partnership

The EU keeps up the belief that its Global Gateway, as the European pragmatic and ‘values-based’ alternative to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, will reverse the negative tide. The second Global Gateway Forum 9-10 October 2025, in Brussels, managed to mobilise important African leaders such as South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame, demonstrating that large-scale infrastructural investments continue to generate some interest. However, the Global Gateway strategy might be inadequate to restore trust, as it does not address the deeply rooted political tensions between the two continents.

What can be done to build a stronger political and mutually beneficial partnership?

First, each party should start with a clear articulation of its interests. This implies that the EU should stop portraying itself as a kind of do-gooder with a mission ‘to help Africa’. Many Africans are tired of this hypocritical behaviour. They know perfectly well that the EU will always prioritise – like any other global player – its own interest agendas: like with COVID-19, the ‘migration crises’ and Russia’s war on Europe’s eastern borders. Patronising attitudes, interference, and disguising European self-interests as African interests have created aversion to the EU and even hostility towards France in particular.

The partnership remains largely Brussels-driven in its design, agenda-setting, and communication. To counter this EU predominance, African countries and AU institutions could be more explicit on how a stronger relationship with the EU could serve their interests. Possibly starting from its Agenda 2063, the AU could develop its own strategy towards the EU and become a real co-architect of a jointly owned AU-EU strategy.

Second, real progress must occur in between summits, not only during the two days ‘supreme moment’ of the summit. This means developing a structured and well-prepared process that openly addresses the deeply rooted sources of friction that divide both continents. The time should be used to find compromises on issues such as migration and mobility, the extraction and processing of raw materials, climate adaptation, energy transition, agricultural commodities and the persistent double standards on governance and values. Monitoring and follow-up mechanisms should ensure continuity, institutional learning, and tangible and measurable results.

Ministerial meetings could play a constructive role in this, provided that these are not just elite-driven but well-prepared in advance with a truly inclusive multi-actor process, involving civil society, youth, businesses, social partners and think tanks who should have the necessary resources and space. Ultimately, “inclusivity will be the defining factor that sets Europe apart in the growing battle of offers for partnership in the Global South”.

Finally, a strengthened partnership between the EU and the AU should be fully integrated into the rapidly changing geopolitical context.

The existing multilateral rules-based global order is perceived as unfair and no longer representative of the shifting economic and political power at the global level.

The EU is desperately searching for new allies in the Global South who disapprove of the ‘mafia-style politics’ of the USA and Russia. However, in recent years, the EU has been losing its credibility in major parts of the Arab world, Africa and other parts of the Global South, especially since it blatantly failed to condemn Israel’s war crimes and impunity in Gaza. The catastrophic consequences of Europe’s passive attitude towards Israel will continue to haunt Europe in the coming years.

If Europe wants to be taken seriously, it should support Africa’s demand for fairer representation in multilateral institutions – from the UN Security Council to the IMF and World Bank – and be willing to adjust its own post-war overrepresentation. It is better to do this now instead of being forced to do so in the future. Without such change, Africa and the wider Global South will continue to develop alternative institutions or gravitate towards non-Western power blocs such as the BRICS.

The way forward for the AU-EU partnership is unpredictable in the current global context. There is no need for over-optimistic statements that fail to reflect reality. Instead, the next summit in Luanda should be the starting point of a more honest and open political dialogue, one capable of producing compromises and mutual concessions on the historical imbalances and substantial divergences of views that have clouded the relationship well before the formal 25 years of AU-EU summitry.