ECDPM Board member Jean-Claude Boidin shares his thoughts on the political agreement between the European Commission and the ACP states. Looking at the agreed texts, one cannot help concluding that the ACP-EU partnership has become more and more political in terms of themes and approach. Trade and aid aspects, which dominated the partnership at the time of the Lomé conventions, have lost much of their weight and gradually shifted to technical parts of the agreement, alongside a lengthy catalogue of thematic sectors. During the negotiations, the most thorny issues have all been of a political nature: migration, reproductive health, institutions, non-execution clause. While tariffs and customs matters are extensively dealt with under the EPAs, trade-related aspects are generally not. They remain an important area for trade cooperation and receive due attention in the new agreement: trade in services, intellectual property, technical and phyto-sanitary barriers, competition policy and access to public procurement, all such matters call for intensified dialogue and cooperation between the parties. Both sides also agree that protection can be justified to uphold a high degree of environmental and social standards (F49.3). Since Cotonou, the preferential dimension of the Lomé conventions has been gradually eroded, while the relationship between Europe and the ACP lost its “uniqueness”: the ACP-EU trade regime was profoundly overhauled to comply with free-trade rules; with the termination of the EDF and the end of joint management, aid is no longer at the heart of the partnership. In many respects, the treatment granted to ACP countries is no different from that applied to other developing regions. The ACP-EU relation, which has long been a model, finds itself practically “normalised”.