Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Question 142: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if he will report on the Euro-Africa Lisbon summit held on 8 and 9 December 2007; the fringe meetings that took place; the items that were discussed at these; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34645/07]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland was represented at the second EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon on 8-9 December by the Taoiseach and by my colleague Micheál Kitt T.D., Minister of State for Overseas Development. The Taoiseach had a short meeting with President Mbeki in the course of the Summit.

The Summit marked an important step forward in the co-operation between our two continents. Discussions at the Summit covered many common challenges — governance and human rights; peace and security; migration; energy and climate change; trade, infrastructure and development. Global challenges are best faced in partnership, and the impetus given to the EU-Africa relationship by the Summit will help us to work together on this broad agenda.

The Summit also adopted a new EU-Africa Joint Strategy, and a first Action Plan for implementing that strategy, which outlines how the EU and Africa will strengthen their cooperation over the next three years. This comprehensive and far-reaching strategy also commits Europe and Africa to closer political dialogue. Civil society, which made a valuable contribution to the EU-Africa Strategy, also met in the margins of the Summit.

As was agreed within the EU before the meeting, clear and strong messages were delivered on the current situation in Zimbabwe in Lisbon by Chancellor Merkel and Javier Solana, who set out the EU's concerns and the need for progress to a more democratic Zimbabwe in which there is full respect for human rights. President Mbeki, in turn, set out what the Southern African Development Community is doing to bring the two sides in Zimbabwe together, a process for which there is the widest support on both the EU and African sides. While I regret that there was no overt criticism of President Mugabe's government on the African side, I would note that, significantly, only a very few spoke in his defence.