european think tanks group
Watch the video from the DEVCO web Infopoint seminar event in cooperation with ETTG and IAI for the Development – Security nexus.
This year was supposed to be crucial for Africa-Europe relations, culminating in the sixth AU-EU Summit, scheduled for 28 and 29 October in Brussels. But then COVID-19 happened. After a long palaver, a decision was finally taken: the summit will be postponed to 2021, although a date still needs to be fixed. Geert Laporte explains why postponing may not be such a bad thing.
The EU is putting forward the idea of a COVID-19 marker on aid data to track the unprecedented mobilisation of resources to tackle the crisis globally. Rather than such a marker, the EU should consider supporting more sustainable and technologically-savvy approaches to ensure much needed transparency and accountability. The EU could back a number of other initiatives that are likely to better meet information needs, strengthening data ecosystems in developing countries and improving global reporting during and beyond the ongoing crisis.
Energy renovations are a priority for post-crisis recovery plans, both in France, in the European Union and in the world.1 This urgency can be explained both by its rapidly mobilizable economic potential, its key role for climate policies, and by the importance of the fight against energy poverty in a context of increasing vulnerabilities. While proposals for France’s recovery plans abound,2 the challenge now is to identify the most effective levers for combining economic recovery with scaling-up of highly performant deep retrofits, which is a prerequisite for moving onto a convergent path with France’s national low-carbon strategy.
The EU project is often described as an eternal work in progress, a “beautiful yet still incomplete masterpiece”, primarily because of its inability, with a few exceptions, to reach shared decisions, thus effectively exercising its full power potential. It has been said that the European Union could “potentially” become a fully-fledged member of the looming multi-polar system of global governance, provided that it not only develops its economic power, which is insufficient on its own, but also diplomatic, informational and military capabilities.
The need for a greener recovery geared towards meeting environmental targets and climate neutrality, a subject of intense debate since the beginning of the crisis, is at the heart of the European recovery plan announced this week. The acceleration of the Green Deal is presented as one of the two pillars that should guide the European economic recovery, alongside the digital transition.
The ‘Team Europe’ approach should be a rallying point for the active engagement of EU member states and financial institutions, to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. While keeping its priorities, notably towards a value-based approach, resilient health systems, a greening of the recovery and digitalisation, the EU should put greater emphasis on food security and sustainable food systems. Moreover, women should have a central place in the EU’s global response 2.0.
European Think Tanks Group (ETTG) calls on the EU to look beyond its own economic recovery and to work with Africa as our ‘twin continent’ and ‘closest ally’ to avert the worst effects of the crisis and to craft a new partnership for the longer-term. History has taught us that major crises create opportunities for accelerating social, economic and political reforms. The coronavirus crisis provides an opportunity to finally transform the old paradigm of donor-recipient aid relations towards a model of genuine international cooperation between Europe and Africa.
This brief analyses current issues in the EU’s humanitarian aid and makes recommendations for responding to the challenges ahead. Specifically, it addresses the tensions between the Commission’s ambition to be a geopolitical actor and to better respond to multidimensional crises through a ‘nexus approach’ and the strong needs-based humanitarian assistance the EU provides. The analysis is based on a structured review of academic and policy sources, complemented by interviews with Brussels-based humanitarian aid policymakers.
The European project was built on the ashes of two world wars. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the most devastating pandemic afflicting humankind in the last century, may be its undoing. Or can it become the catalyst for building a stronger European Union for the future? The jury is still out.
