imperialism in Africa’;[1] a form of collective European colonialism ‘which will be stronger and more dangerous than the old evils we are striving to liquidate’.[2]
The association agreement created with Part IV of the Treaty of Rome did not, for the most part, integrate the colonial territories into to the EEC but rather established association with them. Nevertheless, as a department of France, Algeria was almost fully integrated into the EEC.[3] Hence, when the Treaty of Rome came into effect with its promise of peace and prosperity, a violent war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives was raging inside the Community. In one sense, Algerian Independence after the War in 1962 led to the end of the Eurafrican dream.[4] Yet the OCT regime outlived the Algerian War of Independence and Europe continued to exercise power over the former colonies through the Yaoundé Conventions (1964–75); the Lomé Conventions (1975–2000) and the ACP–EU Cotonou Partnership Agreement (2000–20),[5] which have continued to secure European economic interests in Africa.[6]
For some scholars, however, the lasting impact of Eurafrica as constituted by EEC-African association agreements is the part it played, as one actor among many, in foiling projects of establishing a genuine African Federation that held out the hope of preventing a Balkanisation of Africa.[7] That Africa emerged as a continent of sovereign nation-states from the 1960s, rather than as an African Federal Union, was not predestined. Yet the emergence of nominally sovereign African nation-states, rather than an African Federation, made it easier for the large Western trading blocs of the post-World War II era, including the EEC, to continue to exercise power over the Global South.[8] For some scholars, therefore, the very idea of state sovereignty, born, at least in part, out of the colonial encounter and a constitutive part of the old world of Droit Public de l’Europe, remains a poisoned chalice.[9]
- ↑ Kwame Nkruhmah as cited by Martin, ‘Dream of Unity: From the United States of Africa to the Federation of African States’ (n 133) 174.
- ↑ Kwame Nkruhmah as cited by Hansen and Jonsson, ‘Another Colonialism’ 457. See also, SKB Asante, ‘Pan-Africanism and Regional Integration’ in AA Mazrui (ed), Africa since 1935, vol 8 (Heinemann 1999) 740; Martin, ‘Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica’ 229. A scholarly argument to that effect was put forward by a historian, Carol Anne Cosgrove (n 116) 78, already in the 1960s: ‘In some respect the association of African territories with the EEC can be said to have produced a collective colonialism’.
- ↑ The special status of Algeria in the EEC was governed by Article 227 of the Treaty of Rome. One significant exception to the full integration of Algeria as a department of France into the EEC was that freedom of movement of workers within the EEC did not extend to Algerian French citizens. Whereas European workers enjoyed freedom of movement in Algeria the opposite did not apply. For a discussion, see Muriam Haleh Davis, ‘The Sahara as the “Cornerstone” of Eurafrica: European Integration and Technical Sovereignty Seen from the Desert’ 23 (2017) Journal of European Integration History 97.
- ↑ Pasture, Imagining European Unity since 1000 AD 191.
- ↑ A new agreement is currently under negotiation, see: ‘Negotiated Agreement Text Initialled by the EU and OACPS Chief Negotiators on 15th April 2021: Partnership Agreement Between [The European Union/The European Union and Its Member States], of the One Part, and Members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, of the Other Part’ <https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/system/files/negotiated-agreement-text-initialled-by-eu-oacps-chief-negotiators20210415_en.pdf> accessed 14 December 2021.
- ↑ Mark Langan, ‘Trade and Neo-Colonialism: The Case of Africa–EU Ties’, Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of ‘Development’ in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan 2018); Mark Langan and Sophia Price, ‘Imperialisms Past and Present in EU Economic Relations with North Africa: Assessing the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements’ 22 (2020) Interventions 703; Hansen and Jonsson, ‘Another Colonialism’ (n 133) 456; Rafael Lima Sakr, ‘From Colonialism to Regionalism: The Yaoundé Conventions (1963–1974)’ 70 (2021) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 449; Martin, ‘Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica’ 228ff; John Ravenhill, ‘Asymmetrical Interdependence: Renegotiating the Lomé Convention’ in Frank Long (ed), The Political Economy of EEC Relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific States: Contributions to the Understanding of the Lomé Convention on North-South Relations (Pergamon Press 1980); Cosgrove (n 116) 81–2, 85.
- ↑ Martin, ‘Africa and the Ideology of Eurafrica’ 227ff; Hansen and Jonsson, ‘Building Eurafrica’ 220–1; Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica 273–5.
- ↑ Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica 266ff.
- ↑ Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law.
