Why EU values partnership with Kenya

In the increasingly uncertain and fragmenting world, the European Union provides a safe shelter for such fundamental values as peace and stability, sustainable development, multilateralism, respect for human dignity, and democracy.

The world faces many challenges, from terrorism to climate change. But when problems are shared, solutions are more easily found.

That is why we managed to advance our relations with Kenya so consistently and in so many different fields.

When Kenyans found themselves in a national emergency because of the 2017 drought, as for the floods in 2018, the EU showed what it means to be Kenya’s most reliable partner.

We have also started a cooperation in supporting Kenya’s fight against terrorism and violent extremism.

The EU has focused its new Joint Cooperation Strategy on job creation for its youth and for the socio-economic advance of women, without whose full contribution no society can credibly develop itself.

For the first time ever, last year, all of the 19 member states of the EU represented in Kenya converged on a Joint Cooperation Strategy last November to match closely the Big 4 Agenda.

The European Union is Kenya’s most reliable international partner in providing, at the very same time, investment in job-creation as well as the very markets where that investment will be delivering their products.

Again, take advantage of the 57 movies we and our member States have brought to Nairobi for our European Film Festival.

You will enjoy a comprehensive tour of Europe free of charge.

The European Union citizens are facing election time this month, but the European Union as such embodies the daily vote of our member States and our citizens working together for the last 62 years, every single day.

The more united we are, the more able we all will be to protect our sovereignty in a world that is getting smaller every day because of technology and its increasing population.

And that is becoming every hour more complex and somehow fragmented, where more countries see abrasive criticism of the same multilateralism which binds together Kenya and the European Union.

On May 9, 1950, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Robert Schuman, presented his proposal for the first pooling of resources that would establish the European Coal and Steel Community leading, seven years after, to the foundation of what is today the European Union.

In his declaration, which we turned into the Europe Day we celebrate here he gave a compelling reason to justify that course: “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it”.

That is the very founding stone our European Union rests upon for all of its friends around the world, today more than ever.

The writer is European Union Ambassador to Kenya.