An agreement between the EU and the regions of the Pacific, Caribbean and Africa is about to be voted by the Commission that entails a new, 20-year development and cooperation agreement. It has raised concerns among pro-family and pro-life advocates for containing controversial issues like the right to abortion and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).

The extensive document covers basically all aspects of life, from business to education through healthcare, including family and life issues.  This was not the case with the previous 20-year agreement signed with the same regions, called Cotonou Agreement, which is supposed to be replaced by this new partnership towards the end of 2021. However, as this new agreement goes beyond the scope of the Cotonou Agreement and addressing new areas of life, and this way making the signatories implement and apply certain new provisions, which are about ensuring Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), and the already mentioned comprehensive sexuality education. And as a matter of fact, nor SRHR neither CSE are universally accepted throughout the European Union, so why does it want to impose it on other nations as well? This is an issue that requires an answer from our side.

The Agreement is legally binding, or in other words, if the conditions set in the agreement are not met, the EU is able to suspend all the aid it undertakes to remit to the signatory countries. Yes, all the aid that would be spent on development would be revoked if the “abortion or LGBTQ standards” are not fulfilled.

Before the Agreement gets to the nation-states of the Pacific, Caribbean and Africa, the Council of the EU and the Parliament will have to vote on it, with the former organ still being able to add or delete paragraphs. This voting in the Council is about to be carried out in the forthcoming weeks.