Mr Michel, at last year's meeting you insisted on the need to move from humanitarian aid to common development policies to lift ACP societies out of poverty. What progress has been made since then?

The relationship between the north and the south has clearly evolved over the last few years Since 2007 the ACP-EU partnership has been based on a relationship between equal partners who share the same rights and obligations. Development aid is only one way of supporting development strategies.

Poverty can only be tackled in an efficient and durable way by achieving growth, which creates wealth. We should combine development aid with medium and long-term economic policies that aim to create the conditions needed for developing the private sector and enable developing countries to compete on a global level.

Dr Laboso, do you feel that the economic crisis in the EU can affect EU-ACP relations?

It is only natural that if members of their own group are undergoing any economic crisis that they would want to deal with that first before dealing with members that are far away in Africa, Pacific or the Caribbean. So yes, one can imagine that it will affect relations, but I hope that the EU will find a way to deal with it and continue the relationship and the agreements that have been reached with ACP countries.