Ezulwini – A senior European Union official has called for a deeper and more meaningful partnership between Europe and Africa, likening it to a marriage built on trust, respect and honesty, during a dinner hosted by His Majesty King Mswati III at the Ezulwini Palazzo on Monday evening.
Hilde Vautmans, Vice-Chair of the DACP Delegation to the OACPS-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, addressed the gathering at the parliamentary dinner, which brought together the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Speaker of the Senate, members of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly and other distinguished guests.
“I want Europe and Africa to marry,” Vautmans told the room. “A marriage built on trust, built on respect, built on honesty, also built on patience.” 
She added a personal note to her appeal, telling guests she speaks from lived experience. “I know what I’m talking about because I’m married to an African man,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Vautmans had arrived in the Kingdom a day earlier and attended a cultural and football celebration, where she met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Speaker of the Senate on what she noted was Mother’s Day. She described the experience as one that left a lasting impression.
“I really like the music, the colors, the energy, the dancing. I also like the horses. And it was impossible not to move,” she said. “They say culture is the heartbeat of a nation. And Eswatini has a very, very strong heartbeat.”
She expressed gratitude to the King for the warmth shown to the European delegation, drawing on a well-known African saying to capture the hospitality received. “A visitor leaves with the warmth they were given,” she said, joking that the European delegates would need to buy bigger suitcases to carry home the warmth extended to them by their Eswatini hosts.
Vautmans used the platform to push for the assembly to go beyond the usual statements and deliver results that ordinary people could feel. “I’m a politician. I’m paid to talk, but I want this assembly to have action that you feel it on the ground, not just words or resolutions,” she told the gathering. “Our citizens need to feel what we are doing for them. We are the soldiers of the citizens, and that’s what we need to do.”
She said she would raise two priority issues during the assembly sessions the following day, naming youth and trade as the areas she considered most critical. “I think Europe and Africa must invest in trade relations,” she said, adding that young people are the children of the future and must be placed at the centre of any meaningful agenda.
Vautmans also paid tribute to Eswatini’s role in driving the assembly’s agenda forward, saying the Kingdom had shown that the size of a country is no measure of its influence. “It really shows how a small country can be big. A small country can change the future,” she said.
She drew attention to two symbols prominently displayed in the venue, the lion and the elephant, and reflected on what they represent for the continent. “The lion means strength, leadership, courage, protection, but even the lion is never alone in the wilderness. And the elephant, it’s memory, it’s wisdom, it’s stability, it’s care for the next generation,” she said.
Vautmans closed her remarks with an African proverb that she said defined the purpose of the gathering. “If you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together. Tonight, I propose we start the journey together,” she said, raising a toast to what she hoped would become a lasting and fruitful union between Europe and Africa.
