EU-South Africa Summit

On 18th July, the leaders of the EU and South Africa met in Pretoria for the Sixth EU-South Africa Summit. This year’s main topic was Job Creation through Inward Investment and the summit was divided into four thematic parts: mutual economic challenges, strategic partnership, peace and security and global challenges.

South Africa, as well as the EU, has to deal with high youth unemployment and perceives youth unemployment as a threat to development and regional integration, but also to peace and security. For this reason, both sides expressed the will to create South Africa-EU Business Council and a possibility to establish an Employment and Social Affairs Dialogue.

The EU will further support education and skills under the EU financed development programme. Both partners expressed their satisfaction with steadily growing trade and economic relations and therefore called for a quick finalization of Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations. They hope the negotiations could be concluded by the next summit, which will be hosted by the EU.