An Analysis Of The EU's Policy Adjustment To Africa After The Cold War

Europe and Africa enjoy geographical proximity as well as a special historicalconnection. At the very beginning of the founding of the European Community (EC),association agreements between the two sides were signed, which were later expandedand became Lom� institutions, assisting Official Development Assistance (ODA) andpreferential trade. What had been done was to keep the Europe-Africa specialrelationship and serve the cold war. However, after the cold war, there had beensignificant changes in the international and the regional situations, which challengedthe traditional Europe-Africa relationship, and made it impossible to continue.In order to address the new situations, the European Union (EU) started to makestructural adjustments on its policies toward Africa. Generally speaking, theadjustments are not only aimed at reforming relation patterns and bilateralcooperation regimes on the whole, but also focus on adjustment in key areas andsmoothing the connections and coordination between them. A new, long-termuniformed strategy on Africa is formed. Compared with that of the colonial and coldwar era, EU's policies after the cold war turned opener on ideas, frames, policies andmanners. In merely20years, the relationship between Europe and Africa is upgradingfrom the traditional �giving and taking� to mutually equal strategic partnership.Based on all these significant changes and using document methodology, thisdissertation takes adjustment as the main theme, and systemically reviews andanalyzes all these changes while following the core study questions of �why adjust,how to adjust, the results and the influence. With a view of the evolutionary process,there are two characteristics of EU adjustment policies. Firstly, these policies arepassive reactions to the changing situations, with the purpose of maintaining thespecial relationship between the EU and Africa, seeking new preponderance and kindsof interests. Secondly, they are also proactive actions of EU, who has been striving fora new international position as the special global actor.In a word, no matter what kind of actions they were, positive or passive, the adjustments of EU policies to Africa will not only affect the bilateral relations of EUand Africa, but also other states' policies toward Africa, even the whole internationalsituations, which is worth a special concern. As for China, Africa also has its specialimportance; it is the platform of constructing major power diplomacy with Chinesecharacteristics. Therefore, it is necessary to research thoroughly into the relationshipof Sino-Africa, study how to appropriately deal with all kinds of problems, and keepSino-Africa relations moving more smoothly, and speed up the Sino-AfricaCooperation3.0.