On 15 June, UNOAU, the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to the African Union (AU) and the European External Actions Service (EEAS) of the EU held a working-level meeting in Addis Ababa to discuss their collaboration with the AU and the possibilities for closer engagement between the EU and UNOAU in their partnership with the AU. The Head of Pan-African Affairs Division of the EEAS in his intervention underlined the strong links between the UN and the EU in peace and security, noting the recent visit of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office to Brussels. He informed that the visit of his team to Addis Ababa served as a follow-up to the EU-AU summit held in February 2022 and briefed UNOAU on the Global Gateway initiative launched by the EU, noting that he was looking forward to identifying flagship projects in collaboration with the AUC while also identifying ways of monitoring progress in the implementation of such collaboration.

The Head of Pan-African Affairs Division informed that the EU launched several new tools and initiatives on governance, peace and security, such as the European Peace Facility, launched in March 2021, replacing the African Peace Facility, which has ceased to exist. He underlined that despite the closure of the African Peace Facility, the EU will continue to support AU Peace Operations, adding that the EU wished to further implement the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the AU and the EU after their summit in Abidjan in November 2017. In addition, the EU aims at improving the cooperation with the AU to ensure that the two organizations cooperate in a more systemic way, based on more structured and regular exchanges. This would also entail stronger cooperation and more regular exchange with the UN. 

UNOAU representatives noted that the EU and UNOAU had common interest and underscored the important (financial) role the EU played for the AU, while also noting the strong interlinkages between the European and the African continent. UNOAU noted that the UN-AU multilateral cooperation was progressing and underscored the important multilateral efforts of the ECOWAS and the Malabo summits and of other multilateral initiatives such as the Joint Assessment in the Sahel. Participants further discussed the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on the continent and on AU-EU relations and agreed to engage in a more regular exchange on issues of comment interest.