EU must act constructively over Arab crisis

WORLD VIEW:Upheaval in Middle East may have same implications for EU as fall of the Berlin Wall

FROM STABILITY guarantees, migration control, energy supply and anti-terrorism security to a partnership for democracy and shared prosperity.

The headline agenda of the European Union’s policies towards North Africa and the Middle East have changed almost as dramatically as the political landscape in that region during this year’s “Arab spring” awakening. The EU now faces the daunting challenge of responding creatively to these changes in its southern neighbourhood.

The difficulties posed are illustrated in this week’s call by Sarkozy and Berlusconi for the EU to tighten up the Schengen system of free movement because Tunisian and other refugees avail of it on the Italian-French border. Both men are under pressure from right-wing movements refusing to extend any partnership or sharing that far.

There is a better understanding of the historical significance and long-term consequences of this profound transformation. It is probably as important as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in its potential impact on Europe.

That ushered in first the Maastricht treaty on economic and political union and then the perspective towards enlargement which brought its membership from 15 to 25 in 2004 and 27 in 2007. On Monday next, Polish and other central and eastern European workers will have the right of free labour movement to Germany, France and the other states which, unlike Ireland and the UK, delayed it for seven years. The euro zone crisis is entangled with this equally unsettling prospect for the new European right.

The Middle East and North Africa crisis is likely to be similarly long-lived – irrespective of the precise outcome in particular states.

Its unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain has been more dramatic so far than in Jordan, Morocco, Algeria or Oman. Saudi Arabia leads the field in offering top-down financial incentives to buy off or contain demands for political change and reform more or less typical of the latter group, but it would be foolish to think this can be successful.

Egypt shows it takes time for the various social and political forces to emerge and that they compete hard for dominance. Although youthful liberals made the running in demands for change, conservative army and religious groups now hold the advantage, partly because they are longer in the field. Egypt will influence other states because of its cultural and political leadership – as in brokering this week’s Fatah-Hamas agreement.

It is too soon to say if the Arab spring will be like the Hispanic American wars of liberation from 1810-25, the European revolutions of 1848-9 or 1989-91.

Describing these as “a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, one detonating the other, across an entire region of the world”, Perry Anderson argues in the New Left Review that they determined political life for a long period, even if they were snuffed out like 1848. Political scientists talk of short-lived, intense “critical junctures” followed by prolonged periods of “path dependence”. Lenin put it more pithily: “There are weeks when decades happen and decades when nothing happens.”

The European Commission published its proposals on a partnership for democracy and shared prosperity with the southern Mediterranean on March 8th. Endorsed by European Councils on March 11th and 24-25th , they form the framework for its new policy, based on three pillars: democratic transformation and institution-building, fundamental freedoms, constitutional reforms, reform of the judiciary and corruption; support to civil society, enhanced opportunities for exchanges and people-to-people contacts; and sustainable and inclusive growth and economic development.

These objectives exemplify the EU’s soft-power approach. They are now being elaborated through humanitarian assistance, electoral monitoring, a review of aid and new trade and investment programmes, including agriculture and energy.

The harder side of policy on migration, refugee flows, mobility and security awaits further commission proposals ahead of next month’s EU summit – which is what France and Italy are pitching into with their demands that Schengen be tightened up. That shows the older realist agenda of stability, migration control, energy supply and anti-terrorism security has not disappeared.

Harder again is the council’s endorsement of Nato’s military operations to protect Libya’s civilian populations. As Anderson says: “The initiative for Nato’s attack came from France and Britain, re-running as if in a time-warp the spool of the Suez expedition.” He reminds us too that the region is distinctive in two major respects: the unique longevity and intensity of the western imperial grip on it over the past century and the similar length and strength of the assorted tyrannies that have preyed on it since decolonisation.

Escaping from that history will take another generation. This may coincide with an intensification of the demographic and economic troubles that along with a rapid communications revolution explain the timing of these uprisings. Youth unemployment, higher food prices and stagnant and corrupt politics will continue to influence events. Unless the EU responds constructively, it will reap the whirlwind.