Admittedly Africa faces serious challenges but the majority of countries have been implementing strong political and economic reformsforseveralyears that are now yielding positive results.
Their reactions, though, have alternated over the years between insisting that reforms had already been made and stalling for time by stating that the reforms would take severalyears more to complete, maybe banking on the hope that American attention would drift.
On this issue, too, Mr Juncker has tried to find a compromise, suggesting that the rebate debate be linked to farm-subsidy reforms, and that Britain's rebate be frozen in nominal terms forseveralyears.