European Union-African Union summit in Tripoli

[pampango]

http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=2&i=5159

A special Eurobarometer on EU-Africa relations published ahead of the EU-Africa Summit in Libya on 29/30 November shows that European citizens broadly agree with the focus of cooperation between the two partners. For Europeans, the main challenges for cooperation are to tackle poverty (38%), peace and security (34%), and human rights (33%). Different trends can be observed in EU15 (older EU members) and EU12 (newer members). The latter tended to mention poverty and hunger first, while the former attributed greater importance to democracy and good governance in EU-Africa cooperation.

Since the EU-Africa Summit in 2007, the focus of relations has moved from a simple donor-recipient approach towards a true partnership where problems are tackled together, reflecting the interests of both parties.

This Eurobarometer "EU and Africa - Working towards closer partnership" looks at how Europeans perceive relations between the two continents. 34% of Europeans think that Africa will become a more important partner for Europe over the next decade, whereas 42% believe that the relationship will remain the same.

Furthermore, Europeans do not see migration as an area of major importance despite relatively high media coverage of illegal immigration issues, particularly in Southern Europe. Although respondents in Spain (11%) and Malta (18%) do attach significantly higher levels of importance to this issue than the average European (6%), migration is, on average, still seen as less important than poverty and human rights.