Every year, on the 9th of May, the European Union celebrates the "Europe Day". On that day, seventy years ago, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann, presented his plan for political cooperation in Europe. The so-called Schumann Declaration is considered to be the founding text of European integration. Schumann, as all of Europe's founding fathers - including Jean Monnet, Guy Mollet, Paul-Henri Spaak, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gaspari, was acutely conscious that Europe's best hope of becoming an independent power in a bipolar world was to increase its landmass, population and material wealth. Together with all these great politicians he was a passionate advocate of the idea of "Eurafrica".

The Schuman Declaration made explicit reference to the development of Africa as one of the main objectives of the nascent European Community. However, this aspect of the Schuman Plan "is often squeamishly excised from the text" (Hansen & Jonsson 2016: 123). Indeed, it was the colonial era, and the colonialist ideology was lurking beneath the surface of the Eurafrica concept. Both the Europeans and the Africans wanted to leave their past behind.

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