This weekend ended the auspicious EU Presidency by the German government, and a very strong woman. As Portugal takes the reins it will be shadowed by some very large feminine footprints.Chancellor Merkel set out to make a difference with her leadership and well, by all accounts she did, if just a bit. There was the well-known tug of war on climate change at the G-8. The Chancellor managed to win this effort, just barely, by pulling her colleagues, pas sans Bush, slightly onto the side of the environment. And then there was the constitutional revival. During the backroom (and frontroom) brawling, Sarkozy emerged from hidden negotiations to update reporters on how happy he was to serve as Merkel's "ambassador"--an unusual statement from France's new male heir not lost on the European press. As a German Minister of State recounted to me, it was actually the Ukraines who stepped in at the eleventh hour to convince the Poles to accept the compromise, another man, but no bother.
Yet, with all this fanfare it was easy to miss another key initiative set in motion by the Chancellor surely to be important marker in the coming EU discourse---partnerships with African governments on improving social, economic and environmental unrest. The Germans lead a number of EU-wide dialogues on security and conflict which moved away from the usual portrayal of endless corruption and war on the continent to focus on strategies that can make actual progress. Last week, the Federal Foreign Office and GTZ hosted one such meeting on African and European security related to desertfication and drought, climate change, conflict and forced migration.
This is no small human rights issue. Some 240,000 Africans are smuggled into th
e EU annually with 100,000 attempting to enter the EU by crossing the Mediterranean.They are leaving poorly tended agricultural drylands all over Africa in search of employment. This year some will die in their march across the Sahara hoping to reach a boat. Others will wait out their fate in bulging refugee camps. Still others will die at sea. The German dialogue facilitated some of the most honest debates I've witnessed in years on what Europe needs to do if it really wants to change the environment-poverty-migration dynamic. These findings I am told will be passed on to the Portuguese with importance and then debated by the EU this fall. Merkel's government has also vowed to step-up its work for Africa and to push the EU even further. However small the reforms that actually resulted in her six-month tenure, the woman Chancellor has definately set the pace for her male colleagues. All in all, a very good run.
