Purposefully Triggering Unintended Consequences: the European Commission and the Uncertain Future of the EU-ACP Partnership

Abstract

The EU's proposal to renew the EU-ACP Agreement in spite of a number of signals pointing in the opposite direction is inter alia the unintended consequence of independent decisions taken in three different policy areas (trade, environment, and foreign and security affairs). The common unintended consequence that the three decisions shared would not have materialised if the European Commission had not purposefully triggered it to justify its vision on future EU-ACP relations. These findings challenge the prevailing and superficial usage of the notion of the unintended as a synonym for unanticipated and undesirable and demonstrate that unintended consequences do not necessarily presuppose lack of anticipation, but they may well be the result of calculation of policymakers.

There is life beyond the European Union: revisiting the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States

“…8 In the end, perhaps the most visible case of ACP Group presence in the international arena is in relation to the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015. Indeed, the formation of the so-called High Ambition Coalition, initially between the ACP Group and the EU and eventually extended to other states, was considered a 'game changer' in that it put significant pressure on major emitting countries, particularly China and India, for a far-reaching deal on mitigation of and adaptation to the effects of climate change (Carbone 2019a).…”

A Break from the Past or Business as Usual? EU-ACP Relations at a Crossroad

“…The umbrella partnership would avoid the cost of refusing any partnership with the partner countries as a group and could preserve the Cotonou acquis, notably when it comes to essential elements and the link with Economic Partnership Agreements. (European Commission & High Representative, 2016b: 26) During the EPA negotiations, DG trade negotiators were 'not very eager to include provisions on human rights as key conditions to sign the agreements' (Carbone, 2019). 6 Due to the autonomous role of DG Trade, the different EPA agreements do not contain a coherent set of human rights commitments, but they all make reference to respecting the essential elements of Cotonou.…”

“…According toCarbone (2019), all EPAs make reference to the Cotonou-agreement. However, the specific commitments on human rights vary from implicit, ambiguous to explicit commitments a la those in the Cotonou agreement.…”

The Calm after the Storm: Plurilateral Challenges to the Post‐2020 EU–ACP Partnership

“…The alternative was to adopt three separate agreements, one per region: Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. In the case of Africa, one point of contention concerned the role of North African countries in the new framework, considering that each of them had signed association agreements with the EU under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) (Carbone, ; Keijzer and Schulting, ; Kühnhardt, ).…”