Overview

The new Partnership Agreement, the Samoa Agreement, between the European Union and the members of the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States, the Samoa Agreement, includes a robust parliamentary dimension.

The text of the new Agreement states that the Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) will be held once every year and provides for three Regional Parliamentary Assemblies (RPAs) for Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The three new Regional Parliamentary Assemblies (RPAs) will have stand-alone meetings once a year, on rotation between the EU and the respective regions. An additional meeting of each RPA may be held at the margins of JPA plenary sessions.

The Assembly shall comprise, on the one hand, one member of parliament of each State Party in the Pacific, and an equal number of Members of the European Parliament.

An annual session of the Assembly shall be convened by its Co-Presidents, to take place alternately in one of the Pacific OACPS Member states and in the European Union.

A second annual plenary session of the Assembly may be organised in conjunction with the JPA plenary at the same venue.

PACIFIC countries are: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

At each plenary session held in Europe or in the Pacific, the Bureau may, in cooperation with the host country, convene a Pacific-EU Women's Forum. It shall advocate for women's rights and gender equality in accordance with Article 40 of the Pacific Regional Protocol to the OACPS-EU Partnership Agreement..

The Bureau may, in cooperation with the host country, also convene a Youth Forum, to which young people are invited in order to deepen the people-to-people dimension of the partnership and to promote youth empowerment and active participation of young people in accordance with Article 41 of the Pacific-Regional Protocol.

The aim is to make the RPAs as effective, engaging and as visible as possible, and to allow swift and efficient work to underpin OACPS-EU cooperation. Decisions on meeting venues and frequencies under the Samoa Agreement will also take into account issues such as organisational efficiency and costs.