If I had not said it before, let me just say that if there is one fallout from the global financial crisis, it is perhaps how it has spawned a need in some quarters to look within existing organisational structures to see what works and what does not. This means that regional groupings are beginning to make their internal mechanisms more efficient to--one-would-assume--protect their groupings.
As the African Union celebrates 2010 as the Year of Peace and Security, it is heart-warming to read that the EU, along with the UN and the AU are getting serious about how to collaborate to ensure a more peaceful and balanced world. To read this even when the EU has passed the Treaty of Lisbon is encouraging.
But only insofar as inherent asymmetries between parties like the EU and the AU are addressed in a more comprehensive manner than free trade agreements like the EPAs!
Serrano reaffirmed EU's support for the regional integration agenda as a means to achieve economic growth and peace where he said the EU has developed regional strategies in partnership with all world regions.
"The challenges facing the international community -- poverty, conflict, terrorism, non-proliferation, climate change, are closely interlinked and of a magnitude that requires collective action," Serrano said.
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