The Council of Ministers of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), will meet 26 March in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, under the chairmanship of Botswana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Phandu Skelemani, whose country is currently holding the chairmanship of the ACP, PANA learnt from official sources here.
During the meeting, the council will appoint a new Secretary General for the group to replace Ghanaian Ibn Chambas, who has since been appointed the United Nations special envoy to Sudan.
The future of the ACP-EU partnership and the 2000 Cotonou accord are expected to be high on the agenda at the Brussels meeting.
The seventh ACP summit which took place in December, 2012, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, established a panel of high-level officials to look into the 2000 Cotonou accord in a bid to see whether or not it should be broken.
The panel is to meet for the first time on 25 March in the Belgian capital, official sources have indicated.
The council of ministers will also focus on the 11th European Development Fund, which is to cover the 2014-2020 period, as well as the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) which the European bloc is to sign with six different ACP regions — West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.