Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper examines the limits of summit diplomacy as exemplified by the EU-Africa 2015 Valetta Summit in migration and, in view of the forthcoming 5th EU-Africa Summit questions if it is better to move from multilateral to plurilateral relations in the continent to continent discourse.

Paper long abstract:

Although the first EU-Africa Summit (Cairo, 2000) inaugurated a political dialogue, it was in 2005 that the EU formulated its 'Strategy for Africa' as a single agenda for the continent to continent engagement. Since then there have been regular Summits but also Summits dealing with specific themes only. Thus, in November 2015 the Valetta Summit was held to advance well-managed migration between the two continents and strengthen the fight against irregular migration. The paper will argue that the Valletta Summit failed to have any tangible results, being rather a repetition of previous engagements undertakings in other fora (e.g. the Rabat and Khartoum political processes). The apparent inability to handle the irregular migratory waves effectively, necessitating even a military naval operation in the Southern Mediterranean, begs the question if conference diplomacy at summitry level is still the best way to approach the pressing issues in the EU-Africa engagement. It will be examined by referring to some of the problems associated with this kind of diplomacy, including summit fatigue, donors' fatigue, and unnecessary duplication of efforts. The paper concludes with proposing that when dealing with specific issues it might be preferable to move from multilateral to plurilateral diplomacy and engage only those region/s and states which are directly concerned.

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