27.1.2023
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 32/93 Thursday 23 June 2022
61.
Welcomes the declaration agreed by the meeting of leaders of local and regional governments of the member states of the AU and the EU on 15 February 2022 in Brussels, which emphasised inter alia that without the engagement of local and regional governments, 65 % of the 169 targets underpinning the SDGs will not be reached;
62.
Welcomes the agreement of the AfCFTA Council of Ministers on common rules of origin for the bloc for 87,7 % of goods or 3 800 tariff lines covered by the AfCFTA; calls on the European Commission to harmonise the rules of origin and to develop a proposal for unified rules of origin for trade with all African countries, based on the rules recently agreed within the AfCFTA, to replace the patchwork of rules of origin in the different trade agreements and arrangements of the EU with African regions and countries; is convinced that this would also be to the benefit of EU companies and customs authorities; calls on the Commission to explore further possibilities and measures to enhance links and synergies between the EU’s different trade arrangements with African countries and the AfCFTA; welcomes the AfCFTA’s goal of improving regional differentiation and the expansion and interconnection of infrastructure systems; calls on the EU to engage with the AfCFTA Secretariat to advance capacity building and technical support for the implementation of the AfCFTA;
63.
Welcomes the fact that in November 2021, the EIB opened its first hub in Africa, in Kenya’s capital Nairobi;
64.
Appreciates the initiative by the Council and the Commission to organise the first Africa-Europe Week, which was held in February 2022 in Brussels; welcomes the fruitful work of several thousand representatives from youth organisations, civil society organisations, local authorities, the cultural sector and the business sector; stresses that better EU engagement with young Africans and the African diaspora in the EU could structurally improve the EU-Africa relationship in the long term; regrets, in this context, that the European Parliament was not more involved and that the events took place during Parliament’s plenary week in Strasbourg, and underscores the importance of promoting, ahead of upcoming initiatives, greater cooperation between all stakeholders, including business organisations; calls on the Commission to organise the Africa-Europe Week on an annual basis, and to include young people, especially women and girls, in discussions organised during the Africa-Europe Week;
65.
Calls on the Commission to focus future editions of the EU-Africa Business Summit on the potential that local economic and sustainable production alternatives, such as organic and fair trade products, smallholder farmer cooperatives and social economy stakeholders, can play in building up a more sustainable and fair trading partnership between Africa and the EU;
66.
Stresses the necessity of increasing the involvement of stakeholders, in particular business associations of SMEs from across the African continent and increasingly important civil society organisations from both the EU and the AU, in the debates establishing the new dimension of trade, investment and economic cooperation, which is aimed at fair and ethical relationships;
67.
Notes that transport networks are critical enablers of trade and prosperous economies; stresses the need to better connect African rural and urban areas to ensure greater interconnectedness within African countries and the African continent; stresses that Team Europe proposals for the realisation of infrastructure projects must build on the needs identified by the AU in the Programme for Infrastructure Development for Africa; calls, in this regard, for local and regional stakeholders to be involved in the decision-making process on the nature and volume of infrastructure projects; recalls the fact that an estimated 53 % of roads in Africa are unpaved and are isolated from trade hubs, and that less than half of the population in rural areas has access to functional roads all year round, which illustrates the need to invest not only in flagship projects; also calls for investments in cold chain logistics and modern storage facilities and generally improved logistics between production and consumption locations that enable farmers to deliver their agricultural products over certain distances, also given the rapid urbanisation of Africa, thus contributing to ending food insecurity; notes that a functioning transport network and investments in infrastructure projects can contribute to the development of African economies; calls on the European Commission to facilitate investment in African infrastructural projects through its trade and investment instruments for Africa;
68.
Encourages a broad debate with the aim of reconsidering models and plans to develop infrastructure and to identify alternative mobility models and 21st century modern mobility solutions for everybody within the regions as well as across the continent, based on lessons learned in the EU and other industrialised countries, in order to avoid mistakes made there;