AU bars EU from negotiating with individual African country

The African Union (AU) has resolved that European (EU) will no longer negotiate with any individual African country but with AU as a body, Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, said.

Mr. Onyeama made this known in Abuja on Friday at a press conference on post 28th AU Summit of Head of States and Government in Addis Ababa.

The minister said the resolution was one of the decisions arrived at by the Head of States and Government at the summit.

“Where there will be negotiation with EU for instance, as you know very often the EU will come to negotiate with African country.

“AU is saying henceforth if EU was going to negotiate it should only negotiate with AU.

“But if any of the EU member countries wants to negotiate with any African country individually that is acceptable, but not EU as a block to negotiate with any African country,” he said.

He said another issue that was discussed was the issue of reform of the summit where a committee headed by the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, to look at how to cut down the union operations.

He said the committee was to look at the number of different sub organisation, its agencies and make it leaner to get to a stage that is manageable.

He said the committee was mandated to cut down agenda during the meeting of the union and making the head of state to attend the meeting.

Mr. Onyeama said the summit resolved it would not be willing to accept representation of the head of states at summit, stressing that it was mandatory for the president or his vice to attend the meeting.

He said that another issue was the adoption of ECOWAS, WEMOWA model of funding the AU which was 920.2 per cent of eligible import tax of any countries.

He said the organisation reckoned that using the model “will have four times the amount it needs to cover its budget”.

He said that in doing that it was agreed that the surplus should be lodged with African Development Bank rather than returning it. (NAN)