INTERVIEW: New EU envoy red-flags rigid BEE, SA’s Ukraine ‘double standard’, but hails ‘deeper’ ties

EU ambassador Kristian Schmidt defends the principle of BEE while urging flexibility, highlights differences over Ukraine, and outlines deeper trade, investment and security ties with South Africa.

While the US is aggressively demanding that South Africa abandon black economic empowerment (BEE) and other such domestic policies, the European Union (EU) is taking a much subtler approach.

It accepts the principle of BEE but has a formal negotiation platform with Pretoria to tweak implementation of the policy.

“You’ll never hear me complain” about BEE, says the new European Union ambassador to South Africa, Kristian Schmidt, a Dane.

“We Europeans, first of all, have a share, if not responsibility, in South Africa’s history. There is a historical injustice that needs to be addressed. And Europe will not be pushing for change on that legislation.”

Nevertheless, Schmidt noted that South Africa had been open to discussion about the implementation of BEE in the Clean Trade and Investment Partnership negotiation platform with the EU. So, for example, the policies might require a company to use local content or a local recruit if “it is simply not available”.

“So, either we agree on some flexibility, pragmatically, or the investment doesn’t happen.”

And Pretoria was also open to discussing “ equity equivalence ” – for example, foreign companies investing in transformation funds rather than ceding 30% of the ownership of their companies to local individuals.

But Schmidt added that EU investors also wanted to invest in a stable country and “stability comes from improving equality”.

At the core of the relationship between the EU and South Africa are shared values, Schmidt said. These also helped shape the EU’s nuanced view on South Africa’s controversial failure to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

“We would be making a mistake if we were telling South Africa to choose sides,” Schmidt said. Nevertheless, he adds that the ANC fought “imperialism, oppression, the rule of force not of law, and the total disrespect for human rights”.

“And these crimes against humanity are now being perpetrated by Russia in Ukraine. South Africa is extremely and rightly clear that if we talk about consistency in foreign policy, then in Sudan, Gaza, all these crises in the Middle East in general, and Ukraine, there cannot be double standards.

“So, if you condemn what is happening in Gaza, you should also condemn what is happening in Ukraine.”

However, he says that Europe is closer to the war and so expresses its objection to Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s national sovereignty and the UN Charter “with greater urgency” and acknowledges that South Africa has taken initiatives, such as the African Peace Initiative and, more recently, made a call at the international Pathways to Peace conference in Toronto for “the return of all civilians and especially children that have been abducted, deported and captured or imprisoned” to their families in Ukraine.