Solidarity as Resource in the European Union (EU)´s Foreign Policy with Africa

Against the background of geopolitical competition and transnational crises, solidarity has become a new buzzword in European Union (EU) internal and external affairs. While solidarity among its member states has been a cornerstone of the EU since its early days, it has also evolved to a norm of the Union´s external affairs. Beyond transnational solidarity among individuals, the EU´s relations with other actors in the world have been shaped by solidarity, both in discursive practices and actions. Specifically, the Africa-EU Partnership as area of the EU´s external affairs in which many of the previously mentioned transnational challenges unfold has featured solidarity as prominent concept. Key documents of the partnership such as the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), the Joint Vision for 2030, or the Samoa Agreement emphasize solidarity among the partners, their actions and across policy fields. Beyond this emphasis, solidarity has also featured in specific cases of the partnership, particularly in expressions of solidarity for responses to crises, actions, sanctions, violent conflicts, and transregional challenges. Yet, despite this relevance of solidarity, it remains considerably under-researched in both conceptual and empirical terms. This is astonishing also against the background that EU solidarity has been object of demands by other actors, key to material support programs and sanctions, or materialized in the EU´s discourse on migration. It has thus been constructed as a resource facilitating efforts within the partnership. Focusing specifically on this pattern of solidarity, the proposed paper will engage in a comprehensive empirical analysis of the construction and practice of solidarity by EU actors in the context of the Africa-EU Partnership. It embarks on the research question in how far and under what conditions EU expressions of solidarity towards African partners increase their capacities. Theoretically, the proposed paper conceptualizes solidarity as exchangeable resource and thus potential facilitator for efforts of the partner. For instance, solidarity expressions and declarations can lead to increased recognition, legitimacy, autonomy, or agency of other regional organizations as partners, and thus increase their capacities as crisis managers. Empirically, the paper embarks on a broad examination of the construction, use, and discursive framing of solidarity by EU actors since 2007, the year of the JAES. As first step of the empirical analysis, this comprehensive examination identifies key patterns of the EU´s expressions of solidarity in crises that have potentially affected the capacities of African regional organizations as partners. It draws on statements by key actors of the partnership such as the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Commission (EC), the European Parliament (EP), and key representatives of these institutions, as well as a content analysis of systematically collected media reports by African and European agencies via the database Nexis. In a second step, the analysis will embark on two in-depth case studies of joint efforts in the partnership which will be selected based on the results of the examination in step one and include a vice versa account of the conceptualized process, e.g. increased EU capacities because of African solidarity.