From December 7th to 9th, more than 70 European and African leaders met in Lisbon, Portugal, to attend the EU-Africa Summit. Seven years after the Cairo summit, the Lisbon event ended with an ambitious action plan and a promise to meet again in 2010, but wasn’t able to tackle key issues such as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) and human rights.

In the Summit’s final declaration, the political leaders pledge to “develop this partnership of equals, based on the effective engagement of our societies, in order to achieve significant results in our fundamental commitments, namely: the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals; the establishment of a robust peace and security architecture in Africa; the strengthening of investment, growth and prosperity through regional integration and closer economic ties; the promotion of good governance and human rights; and the creation of opportunities for shaping global governance in an open and multilateral framework”.

Some of Africa’s strongest economies clearly rejected EPAs, thus challenging the EU pressure to finalize them before 2008. “We are not talking any more about EPAs, we’ve rejected them”, said Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, “we’re going to meet to see what we can put in place of the EPAs”. European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso promised Brussels was not pushing African countries over trade.

On the sensitive human rights front, German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly criticized the leaders of Zimbabuwe and Sudan for not respecting human rights.