Africa and the Middle East are central to Europe's security and prosperity, yet the European Union struggles to present itself as a serious partner.
It will only become credible when it backs its rhetoric on multilateralism with the political will to reconcile competing interests. That also means accepting that countries in the Global South may align differently across issues — the commonly called multi-alignment doctrine — and seeing that flexibility as an opportunity rather than a threat.
Critical sea lanes and land corridors through these regions carry Europe's trade and migration flows exceeding the regulating capacities of Europe alone. And as Europe pursues decarbonization, it will increasingly rely on low-cost green hydrogen partnerships with Gulf and North African producers such as Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.
The need to build strong, stabilizing partnerships with its southern neighbours is clear; the question is whether Europe has an offer that matches these stakes with pragmatism.
Scarce credibility
The EU has long projected itself as a principled and values-driven power. However, many African partners rightly judge the bloc on its lack of strategic coherence, normative consistency and partnership outcomes.
In what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described as a "rupture in the world order," the era in which Europe could rely on U.S. hard power while presenting itself as a normative power is closing.
As one ambassador to the Middle East put it to me recently, "the moral self-image of Europe is neither recognized nor valued." To assert itself more independently on the global stage, Europe's core problem is no longer just its enforcement capacity — where it is starting to find its backbone — but credibility, where it has lost its footing.
Chronic reliance on a patchwork of national or European Commission Directorate-General-driven initiatives continues to produce mixed signals on core files such as migration, sanctions and stability, keeping the EU's potential geopolitical weight underleveraged.
For instance, the European Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, overseen primarily by the Commission's development and home affairs directorates, channeled resources into migration containment and border externalization at the expense of longer-term efforts to tackle the causes of local conflict and strengthen governance.
The European Parliament previously pushed to keep the United Arab Emirates on money-laundering watchlists, citing its role in conflict-linked Sudanese gold and as a conduit for Russian sanctions evasion. Yet this stance, backing key EU stabilization interests, was undercut by certain member states' more transactional ambitions and a Commission proposal for swift delisting.
Furthermore, France's perceived support for Khalifa Haftar in Libya has also sat uneasily alongside the EU's recognition of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, presenting southern neighbours with a split-screen of which 'stability' actor Europe really backs. Even at home, large constituencies of European citizens have signaled their outrage over norms duly defended for Ukraine but selectively discounted in Gaza. To assert itself credibly, the EU will have to be both more politically savvy and pragmatic.
It needs to show that multilateralism can still viably aggregate national initiatives into joint EU strategies. And it should seize opportunities created by multi-alignment, rather than clinging to a ‘countering great powers' narrative that is quickly shedding its salience.
Emerging opportunities
There are real openings for EU institutions to fold national and so-called mini-lateral projects into a recognizable EU-level framework.
EU naval deployments to the Red Sea under Operation Aspides demonstrate how the common foreign and security policy can align member states' security interests, pool resources and define unified mandates, even if national motives still find their way into these missions.
Similar frameworks can be forged in other domains where the EU must arbitrate value-based ambitions and hard strategic interests, as seen in the recent consensus achieved for applying the Anti-Coercion Instrument.
Member states' plans to invest in port and connectivity infrastructure with Gulf partners under the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor reflect a strategic effort to build a new trade route linking Europe with major emerging economies. If realized, these projects could embed that corridor in an EU trade strategy that conditions market and technology access on clear standards and governance commitments.
By embracing multi-alignment, the EU has still more to gain.
Rather than positioning the Global Gateway or the Horn of Africa Initiative as strategic alternatives to China's Belt and Road Initiative — a proposition African partners find as incredulous as undesirable — the EU would do better to present these as complementary investments. The aim should be to focus on where the EU has genuine added value: predictable financing, community-led development and support for regional stability alongside other external investors.
Ultimately, strengthening Europe's southern partnerships will hinge less on eloquent defenses of a rules-based order than on restoring credibility through the choices it makes and the model it presents. That means using its own multilateral tools to speak more coherently, while treating multi-alignment as a strategy for pragmatic cooperation.
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