The Ethiopian government early this week held discussions with ambassadors of the European Union countries for the first time after disputed elections last year, during which Ethiopia said ‘it threw the EU election observation mission report in the garbage.’
A joint statement said both sides discussed foreign policy issues, recent political development in Ethiopia after last year’s general elections and Ethiopia’s ambitious five year economic plan, which  aims to double its GDP.The EU commission and member countries collectively extend an annual one billion Euros to Ethiopia in assistance: “this makes us the most important partner in terms of cooperation, we are also the most important partner to Ethiopia in terms of trade,” Ambassador Marchal said.
The Cotonou Agreement says good governance is an ‘essential element’, the violation of which may lead to the partial or complete suspension of development cooperation between the EU and the country in violation.
Pundits anticipated into Ethio-EU ties would be damaged when they diputed last years polls.
The EU election observation mission, after releasing a preliminary report saying the election proceedings failed to meet international standards,  was barred from coming back to Ethiopia; a move said to be the first one in EU election observation mission history. PM Meles rejected the EU’s mission assessment as “useless trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage”.
“Ethiopia is very, very much attached to its sovereignty. I respect that. Nevertheless sometimes it very difficult to deal with that from the donor perspective as we would like to give some advice,” the ambassador explained.
Despite the challenge, the ambassador says they have influenced how EU’s cooperation would be extended to the GTP: “Collectively the EU is providing more or less one billion Euros every year in terms of assistance to Ethiopia, that will continue and that is already to the credit of the GTP. Now what we have to do is to adopt our cooperation better to suit the needs of the GTP and for that we need to discuss with the government and we are going to do that.