The EU's Legal Ties with its Former Colonies

The European Union pursues preferential policies towards most of its former colonies, but there are significant differences between these policies. In a new DIIS working paper Morten Broberg argues that the European Union’s policies towards former European colonies follow a structure where the former colonies may be divided into four different groups. The differences in how attractive conditions the Union offers these four groups are very considerable. According to Broberg it is very difficult to reconcile the Union's preferential schemes with traditional realpolitische objectives. Rather he finds that the most plausible explanation for the disparate treatment between the four groups of developing countries is a combination of what he terms the various regions’ ‘political nearness’ to their former colonial power combined with ‘historical inertia’, meaning that the original level of preferential treatment is carried on in subsequent schemes.