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SA and EU to embrace at summit after both suffer Trump abuse

SA and EU to embrace at summit after both suffer Trump abuse
Peter Fabricius
By Peter Fabricius
12 Mar 2025
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US President Donald Trump is likely to be the elephant in the room at the summit between the leaders of the European Union and South Africa this week.

After the battering South Africa has taken from the Trump administration over the last few weeks, President Cyril Ramaphosa will welcome European Union Council president António Costa and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen with especially warm and open arms for the eighth EU-SA summit in Cape Town on Thursday, 13 March. 

The summit has not been held for seven years but the aggression President Donald Trump has directed against both South Africa and the EU has lent greater importance and urgency for both sides to meet soon.

“We are in a very particular geopolitical context, which makes it even more important and pertinent,” a senior EU official told journalists this week. 

“We consider South Africa an important global partner and in today’s world it is even more important that we have a strengthened cooperation,” she said, adding that with multilateralism under fire, South Africa was “a very strong ally to continue to push for an agenda in support of the multilateralism that the EU very much thinks is essential”.

“South Africa has also seen a lot of impact from the decisions of the new [Trump] administration to cut aid. So this is something we are looking forward to discussing with them – how they are affected and how they intend to deal with it – and we’ll see how we can help,” she added.

She also cautioned: “The European Union cannot simply step into the void and compensate for the quite big hole that the United States and this administration in particular is creating.” 

Read more: ‘The axe has fallen’ — Trump’s USAID issues notices to terminate funding for key health programmes across SA

She denied the EU-SA summit aimed to help create an anti-Trump coalition. “No, I would say that we are interested in having a global network of countries that we share values and we share interests with… Nobody’s excluded.”

EU aims to strengthen ties


Von der Leyen said in a statement: “The geopolitical landscape is shifting, making strong partnerships more important than ever. I’m going to Cape Town with one goal: to strengthen our unique relationship with South Africa across the board – taking our cooperation on trade, critical raw materials and clean energy to the next level, and bringing new investment under Global Gateway.

“My message: Europe values its partnership with South Africa, just as I value my friendship with President Ramaphosa. South Africa can count on Europe. And I know Europe can count on South Africa.”

Her office added that the summit was “a key moment to support South Africa’s G20 presidency and prepare for the EU-African Union Summit later this year.”

Read more: EU offers full support for SA’s G20 presidency in the face of US attacks

Von der Leyen’s office said that at the summit she would announce an EU “Global Gateway Investment Package” with South Africa to boost mutually beneficial investments through grants and public and private loans from European and local financial institutions. 

“The Global Gateway Investment Package is anchored in three building blocks that align with the shared priorities of South Africa and the EU: 

  • “Supporting the Just Energy Transition with investments in green hydrogen projects, local processing and refining of critical minerals, development of local workforce skills and jobs for the green economy;

  • “Strengthening connectivity infrastructure like transport corridors, including railways and ports (development of the strategic corridor North-South), clean logistics like grid-scale energy storage or public transport decarbonisation, and digitalisation by expanding affordable fibre networks and 5G infrastructure; and

  • Strengthening South Africa’s vaccine production capacity and boosting local pharmaceutical value chains by enhancing the quality of pharmaceutical products and reinforcing skills on health and vaccines regulations.”


The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the South African Nuclear Medicine Research Infrastructure would also sign a collaboration agreement that aims to support South African hospitals to accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. 

Strong ties


The relationship between South Africa and the EU is substantial. The EU is South Africa’s biggest trading partner, aid donor and foreign investor, accounting for about 47% of South Africa’s total foreign direct investment stock. 

Total trade between South Africa and the EU increased by 44% over the past five years – from R586-billion in 2019 to R846-billion in 2023, according to South African statistics.

In 2023, the EU recorded a trade surplus of about R76-billion, though South Africa has enjoyed a surplus in some years. Whereas South Africa’s exports to China, its largest single country trading partner, are largely in raw materials, 31% of its exports to the EU in 2023 were manufactured products. 

In 2007, the EU and South Africa elevated their relationship to a strategic partnership, the only one the EU has in Africa. 

Some sticking points


But South Africa and the EU do have issues which will be discussed on Thursday. South Africa will certainly raise one of its biggest gripes, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a levy on the carbon content of imports into the EU, which is being phased in. Brussels insists  it is purely an environmental measure but South Africa and many other countries regard it as  effectively a form of trade protectionism.

South Africa is likely also to push for greater access to the EU market, including for agricultural goods, to balance trade. And the two sides will almost certainly discuss the perennial problem of EU measures to manage the occurrence of pests such as black spot on South Africa’s large and lucrative citrus exports to the bloc. 

Senior EU officials also said that foreign policy issues such as Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza would also be on the agenda. Pretoria’s failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 initially outraged the EU, though the issue has subsided a bit since then, largely because of South Africa’s participation in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace formula talks. A senior EU official noted “how active President Ramaphosa has been on this file, with the South Africans always participating in the peace summit”, and also noted Zelensky’s visit to South Africa next month. 

It is also likely that South Africa will ask pointed questions about the EU’s controversial critical minerals deal with Rwanda, signed in February 2024. On 24 February 2025, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, announced that the deal for joint development of Rwanda’s critical minerals was being reviewed because of Rwanda’s military and other support for Congolese M23 rebels.

She added that the EU’s defence and security consultations with Rwanda had also been suspended.

This is a particularly sore point for South Africa since 14 of its troops died in January, fighting alongside Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forces against the M23.

The EU-Rwanda deal is, like its critical minerals engagement with South Africa, part of the EU’s efforts to secure the supply of rare materials used to produce microchips and electric cars.

But critics have pointed out that Rwanda produces very little of the minerals such as tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold and niobium and believe that Rwanda is actually mining them in eastern DRC. This has been cited as Kigali’s primary motive for its military incursion into the country.

Asked about this deal, a senior EU official did not respond directly but insisted that the EU had been “very clear… very consistent… in very clearly condemning the invasion of the eastern DRC by Rwandan forces. The subject would come up in the meeting with South Africa and the EU leaders would want South Africa’s assessment, “to see how we can contribute”. DM

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