Africká unie – integrace reálná nebo deklarativní?
African Union: A Real Integration or a Declarative One?

Summary/Abstract: First summit meeting of the African Union, which took place in July 2002 in Durban, constituted a climax of the transformation process of the Organisation of African Unity. The Constitutive Act of the African Union, which accelerates the institutional change of the African continental organisation, entered into force. The African Union relinquishes to a certain extent the principles, which the OAU leant upon, it abandons all the strict adherence to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs. Approval of the Protocol on establishment of the Peace and Security council raised hopes for successful conflict resolution in Africa even though the experience of the OAU showed rather limited (although not completely negligible) role that the Pan-African organisation could play in the area of conflict resolution. The author applies theories of integration on the Pan-African integration processes in order to find an explanation to it. But although many integration processes in Africa comport on the surface with the so-called neofunctionalist theory, and although the term “functionalist” was used to describe the integration spilling over from the sphere of an economic co-operation, the integration processes do not follow the course predicted by a prominent protagonist of the neo-functionalist school of Ernest Haas. Supranational bureaucracies did not become the leading forces behind the integration processes, and interest groups / political parties did not shift their activities and expectations to the supranational structures. The integration in Africa remained firmly in the hands of the national governments.

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