In a wide-ranging Daily Maverick interview, Kristian Schmidt, the EU’s new ambassador to South Africa, accepts the principle of black economic empowerment while pushing pragmatic flexibility, refuses to lecture Pretoria on Ukraine, and sketches a partnership moving from trade into peace and security — as Washington’s rupture with South Africa deepens.
Published 21 October 2026 · 11:20 GMT
On 21 October 2026, the Daily Maverick published a wide-ranging interview with Kristian Schmidt, the European Union's new ambassador to South Africa, conducted by Peter Fabricius. Schmidt, a Danish career diplomat, became Ambassador-Designate on 1 September 2026, after his June appointment in a rotation of EU envoys nominated by foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas. His career runs through Denmark's foreign ministry, EU development and humanitarian posts, ambassadorships in Uganda and Myanmar, and the land-transport directorship in the Commission's mobility department.
The interview carried three deliberate messages. On black economic empowerment, Schmidt drew deliberate contrast with Washington: "You'll never hear me complain" about BEE; Europe carries "a share, if not responsibility, in South Africa's history" and "will not be pushing for change on that legislation." Brussels wants pragmatic flexibility in implementation instead, via the Clean Trade and Investment Partnership: where local content or a local recruit is "simply not available", rules should bend. On Ukraine and Gaza, he refused the lecture while insisting there can be "no double standards": "if you condemn what is happening in Gaza, you should also condemn what is happening in Ukraine." And he came with a mandate to deepen ties, from the first-ever EU-South Africa peace and security dialogue to a green-hydrogen and minerals partnership meant to make South Africa "a world champion". The deeper history of Pretoria's balancing act is mapped in our South Africa factbook profile.
BEE, as Schmidt frames it. The envoy defended the principle of black economic empowerment outright while opening a negotiation on its mechanics. The channel is the EU-South Africa Clean Trade and Investment Partnership, signed in Johannesburg on 20 November 2025, with its first government-to-government dialogue held in August 2026 on renewables, grid expansion, green hydrogen, regulatory cooperation and the business environment. Pretoria, Schmidt said, has been open to discussing "equity equivalence" — foreign firms investing in transformation funds rather than ceding 30 percent of equity — and to case-by-case flexibility: "stability comes from improving equality."
Trade. The engine remains the 2016 EU-SADC Economic Partnership Agreement: duty-free access for about 97 percent of South African exports into the EU, about 86 percent of EU goods into South Africa. The EU is South Africa's largest trade partner; roughly one-third of South African exports to the EU are manufactured goods. After years of South African surpluses, the balance has tipped to a slight deficit: 2025 trade stood at about €46 billion. "Trade is not a zero-sum game," Schmidt said. Engineering News independently cites trade flows of about €45 billion.
Investment. The EU is the largest foreign investor in South Africa — about €40.4 billion cumulatively by 2024, Schmidt said — and "Team Europe" has pledged almost €12 billion under Global Gateway for the just energy transition, connectivity, green logistics and vaccine production. In September 2026 Brussels committed R1 billion in credit guarantees to de-risk EU investment in green-hydrogen production and critical-minerals value chains, a package Engineering News independently confirmed.
Security. The EU and South Africa held their first-ever peace and security dialogue in mid-October 2026: cybersecurity, maritime safety, counter-terrorism, intelligence exchange, and greater alignment on UN resolutions. SAnews independently records that work was already underway to establish a dedicated dialogue on those fronts. The logic of that move is explored in our piece on the G20 and the limits of global governance.
For all its candor, the interview leaves the decisive questions open. Will Pretoria accept the flexibility ask? Schmidt said South Africa has been "open to discussion" on BEE implementation and equity equivalence, but the mechanics are unspecified and Pretoria has made no public commitment. Will the security dialogue change anything concrete? A first meeting is not a joint posture; whether it yields aligned UN votes, shared intelligence, or operational cooperation is untested. Will Brussels move its deadlines? Schmidt held the line — European producers "deserve certainty" — leaving Sasol's green-aviation-fuel approval and carmakers' EV transition under the 2035 combustion-engine deadline unresolved. How far does the Gaza convergence go? Schmidt sees "no big difference of opinion" with Pretoria and noted Kallas's recent description of events there as apartheid — but a remark is not a common position.
It is the clearest public articulation yet of the EU's bid to be the West's credible partner for the Global South — at the moment Washington is torching its own credibility in Pretoria. Where the US demands South Africa abandon domestic transformation policy, Brussels accepts the principle and negotiates the plumbing; where Washington boycotts summits and withholds invitations, Brussels shows up, funds the energy transition, and opens a security dialogue. Every capital weighing non-alignment is watching.
It matters materially, too: €46 billion in annual trade, €40 billion in cumulative investment, an R1-billion de-risking package for the next economy's industries — green hydrogen for Europe's aviation and shipping, critical minerals for its batteries, vaccine capacity for its health security. Schmidt's line that South Africa should not be seen as "a resource colony" is the tell: Brussels knows the extractive script and is writing another — local value addition, skills, industrial research. Whether that script survives European protectionism is the open question of the next decade. The EU's machinery for wielding that power is dissected in our analysis of how the European Union wields power.
Geopolitics: Schmidt is executing textbook middle-power courtship in a fragmenting order. With the US-South Africa relationship in its worst rupture of the democratic era, the EU is positioning itself as the indispensable Western partner — not by outbidding Washington, but by out-listening it. The first-ever peace and security dialogue is the institutional tell: Brussels wants Pretoria as a security actor, not merely a market, because Europe's strategic autonomy is hollow without Southern partners.
Economics: the trade structure explains the diplomacy. A €46-billion relationship in which a third of South African exports are manufactured goods is an industrial ledger, not a colonial one — and the R1-billion hydrogen and minerals package is a down payment on the next one. Schmidt's BEE-flexibility pitch is, at root, an investment-climate pitch: European capital will fund the transition, but only where rules are predictable. "Equity equivalence" is the classic diplomatic fudge — principle conceded, implementation negotiated — and its success will be measured in euros committed, not words exchanged.
History and structure: Schmidt's opening concession — Europe's "share, if not responsibility, in South Africa's history" — is diplomatic capital, spent to buy the credibility to ask for flexibility and alignment in one breath. And the through-line is the green transition as geopolitical gravity: carbon levies, the 2035 combustion deadline and sustainable-fuel standards are redrawing South Africa's industrial map, with Pretoria urged to surf the wave rather than fight it. The unspoken risk is that regulatory gravity looks like green protectionism from the receiving end.
A security relationship with teeth — or not. If the new dialogue yields aligned UN votes and operational cooperation, the partnership crosses from economic to strategic — a template for EU engagement with other non-aligned powers. If it stalls at communiqués, Schmidt's "political actor" pitch rings hollow. A trade-defense precedent: Schmidt underlined the European Parliament trade-committee chair's suggestion that South Africa impose EU-style tariffs on subsidised Chinese EVs — which would make Pretoria among the first major African economies to import Brussels' anti-overcapacity playbook wholesale.
The hydrogen corridor and the Washington variable. The R1-billion de-risking package is meant to prove green hydrogen bankable in Africa — success makes South Africa "a world champion"; failure hands the narrative to Global Gateway skeptics. And every deepening of EU-South Africa ties is read in Washington as defiance: with a US envoy in Pretoria already publicly attacking the government and facing repeated demarches, Brussels' embrace gives South Africa room to hold its line — and gives Washington another grievance. The Miami G20, the first in the forum's history to exclude a member, is where that tension plays out in public.
Three tests await Schmidt's opening bid. The 9th EU–South Africa Summit, which Brussels has confirmed it will host on a date still to be agreed, is where the interview's promises must become deliverables: CTIP milestones, business-environment reforms, the security dialogue's first results. The CTIP ledger — follow-through from the August 2026 implementation dialogue — will show whether "equity equivalence" is a working mechanism or a phrase. The green-hydrogen rollout is the credibility test of the economic pitch. And then Miami: the 2026 G20 without South Africa, an unprecedented exclusion, will measure how far the EU will go in defending a partner Washington has cast out.
The Western lens reads the interview as pragmatic de-risking: Brussels securing the supply chains of its green transition — hydrogen, critical minerals, batteries, sustainable fuels — from a partner holding the geology and the sun, while differentiating itself from Washington's coercive playbook. Schmidt's "no double standards" line is, in this framing, calculated honesty: the price of credibility with capitals that watched Gaza and Ukraine and kept score.
The Eastern lens places Pretoria in a wider EU courtship. As India's Economic Times framed it, "jolted by Trump, the EU woos new partners from Asia to Latin America": the March 2025 Cape Town summit sits in a diary crowded with India, Mexico, Malaysia, China and Japan engagements. From Asia, two details register sharply — Schmidt's suggestion that South Africa tariff Chinese electric vehicles as the EU does, and his swipe at "aggressive bullies, whether they are to the west or to the east".
The Global South lens — the Daily Maverick itself, Diplomacy SA, Engineering News , SAnews — reads a respect dividend. An envoy who begins by conceding Europe's share of responsibility for South Africa's history, defends transformation as principle, and arrives with funded projects rather than demands is the diplomatic opposite of the American posture Pretoria has endured: aid suspended, an ambassador expelled, a G20 boycotted, an invitation withheld.
Kristian Schmidt is a Danish career diplomat appointed in June 2026 and Ambassador-Designate — head of the EU Delegation to South Africa — since 1 September 2026. His career spans Denmark’s foreign ministry, EU development and humanitarian posts, ambassadorships in Uganda (2013–2017) and Myanmar (2017–2020), and the directorship for land transport in the European Commission’s mobility department from 2021 to 2026.
“You’ll never hear me complain” about BEE, Schmidt told the Daily Maverick: Europe accepts the principle, citing its share of responsibility for South Africa’s history, and “will not be pushing for change on that legislation.” But he wants pragmatic flexibility in implementation — negotiated through the Clean Trade and Investment Partnership — including “equity equivalence”, where foreign firms invest in transformation funds instead of ceding 30 percent equity.
The CTIP is the EU and South Africa’s flagship economic pact, signed in Johannesburg on 20 November 2025. It aims to build clean value chains — green hydrogen, critical minerals, batteries, sustainable fuels — while supporting decarbonisation and a just transition. Its first government-to-government implementation dialogue was held in August 2026, covering renewables, grid expansion, regulatory cooperation and the business environment.
Schmidt said the EU would err in telling South Africa to “choose sides” on Ukraine, but insisted there can be “no double standards”: “if you condemn what is happening in Gaza, you should also condemn what is happening in Ukraine.” He acknowledged South Africa’s African Peace Initiative and its Toronto call for the return of abducted Ukrainian children, and said he sees “no big difference of opinion” with Pretoria on Gaza.
The first-ever EU–South Africa peace and security dialogue was held in mid-October 2026. Schmidt said leaders agreed to explore cooperation “well beyond the economic sphere” — cybersecurity, maritime safety, counter-terrorism and intelligence exchange — plus greater alignment on UN peace and security resolutions. South Africa’s government separately confirmed work was underway on a dedicated dialogue covering those same fronts.
