ABSTRACT
This chapter deals mainly with the first ties between the EEC and African leaders through the Association with Overseas Countries and territories (later renamed the Yaoundé and then Lomé Conventions). It examines how these relations were framed within the colonial and post-colonial context: This means policies (development aid, for example) whose legitimacy was based on clientelist and opaque practices (in the delivery of aid, for example) and few regards for human rights and democracy. It also analyses how this relationship evolved in the 1970s following the first enlargement and UK pressure to sanction Idi Amin in Uganda. Most notably, it focuses on the debate between African leaders, EEC member states, and the European Commission about political conditionality, that is the idea of linking the delivery of aid and commercial preferences with the respect of democratic principles and human rights. The chapter looks at the position of different African leaders on this debate and their interpretation of ‘democracy and human rights.’ The underpinning hypothesis is that this debate did not lead to important changes in the short term but it resulted in an important shift as far as the legitimacy of the EEC relationship with African leaders was concerned. This legitimacy was based more and more on the ‘public opinion,’ as led by important NGOs specialized in human rights. We will see how the resulting policy contradictions of the 1990s and 2000s (as far the implementation of ‘political dialogue’ is concerned) are part of this shift.
