This paper discuses and explains the key contentious aspects of the new international agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) initialled in April 2021 and expected to be signed in 2022. Drawing on the author’s exceptional access to primary sources, it questions the view that the EU-OACPS Agreement marks the end of donor-recipient dynamics and the conclusion of relations grounded in power asymmetries between two unequal actors. It demonstrates that the EU and the OACPS persist in their different understandings of sustainable development, particularly with regards to the consequences of climate change; that the OACPS has managed to impose provisions on different forms of economic interventionism to counter the paradigm of market liberalisation promoted by the EU; that advancements on human rights, which the EU considers universal and indivisible, have been resisted by the OACPS in the name of cultural diversity; and that migration and mobility is to a large extent considered a challenge for the EU and an opportunity for the OACPS. Ultimately, this paper shows that the EU-OACPS Agreement is indeed more political than its predecessors, and not just because issues such as human rights, good governance, and migration have assumed greater relevance: political partnership is intended by the two sides to be a compact between actors aspiring to go beyond donor-recipient dynamics, acknowledging that on some issues they have common interests and on others their interests clash, but they remain willing to engage in regular dialogue and cooperation to address them.