The 2016 EU Global Strategy declared "principled pragmatism" a new guiding principle for EU foreign and security policy. The Strategy set a less bashful tone for the EU, asserting that the organisation's "interests and values go hand in hand. We have an interest in promoting our values in the world. At the same time, our fundamental values are embedded in our interests." Does this language thus mark a conscious move away from moral or normative power aspirations to the pursuit of utilitarian interests, or is principled pragmatism merely reflective of how the EU was already conducting its foreign policy?

In Africa, much has been said about the EU's contradictory tendencies, particularly on thematic issues such as trade. Less, however, has been said about the comparative consistency of EU foreign policy in different partner countries in Africa. Do EU role conceptions matter? Or is foreign policy contingent on the receptive capacity of the partner country? Using extensive interviews with EU diplomats in each case study country, this paper will explore the EU's foreign policy in South Africa (higher income), Zambia (middle income) and Malawi (low income). The purpose is to investigate the decision making process in different contexts as the EU exercises (and attempts to reconcile) its material and its value-centric agendas. The choice of three profoundly different economies in Southern Africa allows for the testing of asymmetrical power relations. Indeed, this paper will show that paradoxically, the EU's normative power is strongest where its coercive power is strongest too.

Although the first EU-Africa Summit (Cairo, 2000) inaugurated a political dialogue, it was in 2005 that the EU formulated its 'Strategy for Africa' as a single agenda for the continent to continent engagement. Since then there have been regular Summits but also Summits dealing with specific themes only. Thus, in November 2015 the Valetta Summit was held to advance well-managed migration between the two continents and strengthen the fight against irregular migration. The paper will argue that the Valletta Summit failed to have any tangible results, being rather a repetition of previous engagements undertakings in other fora (e.g. the Rabat and Khartoum political processes). The apparent inability to handle the irregular migratory waves effectively, necessitating even a military naval operation in the Southern Mediterranean, begs the question if conference diplomacy at summitry level is still the best way to approach the pressing issues in the EU-Africa engagement. It will be examined by referring to some of the problems associated with this kind of diplomacy, including summit fatigue, donors' fatigue, and unnecessary duplication of efforts. The paper concludes with proposing that when dealing with specific issues it might be preferable to move from multilateral to plurilateral diplomacy and engage only those region/s and states which are directly concerned.

Corruption everything in society and its detrimental effects are now acknowledged at all levels, reflected all the way from the opinion of the single citizen to supra-national policy. There is a disconnect somewhere in between, where global anti-corruption initiatives seem incapable of effectively formulating comprehensive solutions. At least not without the risk of those policies being watered down to a point far beyond being able to translate ambitious rhetoric to reality.

One of the reasons for the inefficacy may be the rather large variations in values and norms across the world. It is not hard to imagine different social axioms in for example Europe and Africa. That, however, does not necessarily make the comparison less relevant as many European organisations and governments operate in African countries.

The procurement process has been identified by the EU as a particularly susceptible to be influenced by acts of corruption. Therefore, it will serve as the backdrop for this discussion. Using the recently developed framework by Fazekas, Cingolani & Tóth (2016), a typological discussion around what the central values and norms are can be made.

To contextualise, the values and norms themselves as well as, where and how these come into friction with one another, the analysis is based upon a case study of an EU public procurement process in Somalia. The idea is not to argue for a single case to be representative of anything more than it is, but to exemplify that which is discussed in a highly tangible and understandable manner.