Thank you dear Cabinet Secretary [for Foreign Affairs of Kenya, Raychelle Omamo], thank you for your warm reception in this beautiful country, just three weeks before the Summit in Brussels between the African Union and the European Union.
We have been having, the European Union and Kenya, a long-standing relation, but we are no longer the donor of development aid, we are a strategic partner.
Kenya is for us a key partner to pursue an agenda of a shared interest: promoting peace and security – Kenya is a beacon of stability in a very much troubled region of the Horn of Africa -; prosperity and stability. Thank you for the strong contribution that Kenya is doing for Somalia. Thank you for hosting so many refugees.
There is no doubt that global stability is at stake here and in the whole world. And this requires that like-minded countries, like the European Union and Kenya, join their efforts in order to work together in many fields, as the ones that are going to be covered by this Strategic Partnership. Today we are going to work on that: security, sustainable development, economic growth, trade agreements. On all that, we will work in order to overcome the legal and technical difficulties to make our trade agreements better and incorporating more commitments on sustainability. And I hope that soon we will be able to finish this work.
This Strategic Partnership is for the Kenyan people and for the people of the European Union. It will bring concrete results, because it is going to be focusing on delivering commitments, actions, investments, sharing objectives among our people, because we will be, from now on, a much closer partner than in the past.
Together we have to solve problems that are our common problems. I am not here to try to solve Kenya’s problems, because your problems are my problems. And in order to solve them, we have to work together.
This is the spirit of my visit, this is the spirit of the very useful discussions that I have had the pleasure to have with you [Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Kenya, Raychelle Omamo] and with the President [of Kenya, Uhuru] Kenyatta. Let us start a new way of a shared and deeper partnership.
Thank you.
Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-217599