PERSPECTIVE| FES PEACE AND SECURITY Cooperation or Competition? Security in West Africa between ECOWAS and the G5 JAN GREBE December 2018 n Established in February 2014, the regional organisation G5-Sahel with its Member States Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad has aroused great expecta­tions with regard to a stabilisation of the Sahel region, which is plagued by numer­ous conflicts. At the same time, the region has increasingly moved into the focus of (European) public attention in recent years due to its role as a key route for migration to Europe. At present, however, caution is warranted with regard to the creation of new structures and coalitions, as cooperation and links with established security structures such as ECOWAS and the AU remain hazy. n ECOWAS and G5-Sahel signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which they agreed on cooperation in various areas as recently as July 2018. Both sides stressed that they wanted to avoid duplication of efforts and exploit synergies between the two organisations. What form this ultimately takes in actual practice remains to be seen. There are still considerable misgivings within ECOWAS about the new organi­sation, as it was not involved in its inception. n There is a need for a comprehensive strategy to stabilise the Sahel region that does not rely solely on military components, as G5 Sahel is favouring at present. The inte­gration of G5 Sahel into the APSA context, and thus indirectly into ECOWAS as well, is important in a multidimensional approach to stabilising the Sahel. European policy should therefore assign greater support to the systematic leveraging of synergies based on the Memorandum of Understanding concluded by the two organisations, greater political coordination and a stronger role for ECOWAS with its civilian instru­ments in efforts to stabilise the Sahel region.