Ashton: EU needs to rise to the neighbourhood challenges
12.05.2011 | Publications
The uprisings across North Africa and the Arab world pose great challenges for Europe, but also opportunities it cannot afford to miss, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton has told the European Parliament. “As we look at our neighbourhood,” she said, “we have to be ready to rise to the challenges that are being asked of us. I can make hundreds of statements - and I do. I deplore, condemn, urge, demand - but we also need to act.”
Addressing the Parliament in Strasbourg today, she said: “There
are storms blowing across countries we call our neighbours: ‘Arab
spring’, ‘winds of change’ – whatever imagery we use, none of us in this
house know where this will end, and what the end will bring.”
While democracy was about votes and elections, there was far more to it than that. “What
we in Europe have learned the hard way is that we need ‘deep
democracy’: respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, respect for
human rights, an independent judiciary and impartial administration. It
requires enforceable property rights and free trade unions. It is not
just about changing governments, but about building the right
institutions and the right attitudes.” Without deep democracy, she said, the ‘surface democracy’ of election day would not survive.
Speaking of the need for actions beyond words, Ashton raised the case of Syria, on which the EU imposed sanctions yesterday. “We
impose sanctions against regimes which treat the lives of their
citizens as worthless, with people killed at the hands of the police or
security services that they command.”
In the Eastern neighbourhood, she cited Belarus, where President Lukashenko, “in
using violence against peaceful demonstrators and multiplying the
number of political prisoners, he has shown contempt for democracy and
the rule of law”,has left the EU with no option than to adopt strong
sanctions in response, targeting those in the regime responsible for
the crack-down, including President Lukashenko himself.
Sometimes, action needed to go one step further to direct engagement, as in Libya, where the EU had engaged to plan the military support for humanitarian needs – “In
the primary objective of saving lives, sometimes it is only the
military which has the equipment or people who can achieve that –
delivering aid at speed, putting in place the infrastructure,” the
High Representative said, adding the EU was improving its collaboration
with NATO, as well as the African Union, the Arab League and the OIC.
Ashton said she intended to open an EU office in Benghazi, “so
we can move forward on the support we have discussed to the people, to
support civil society, to support the interim transitional national
council… to support security sector reform, to build on what the people
asked us for – they want help in education, health care, security on the
borders.”
In all of this, “human rights are the silver thread that runs through our actions”, HR Ashton said, and the EU’s new neighbourhood policy offered a different level of ambition and vision. “Mutual
accountability is at its core: the EU and the neighbourhood are
responsible to each other for delivering on the commitments that we
make.”
Mobility, Market Access and Money – the three Ms – represented key ways to support the EU’s partners into the future, she said:
Mobility: Societies with many young people long for greater
opportunities – opportunities for young people to travel and study,
opportunities for business too, supporting the chance to travel, to
explore new markets, to sell goods and services. “These are important - and they are in the gift of member states… They need to step up and provide these opportunities.”
Market Access: The EU has a genuine contribution to make to
stimulating economic growth and supporting economic recovery. Allowing
those countries to develop their markets with the EU could make a real
difference. “But we have to have the political will to do it” a particular challenge in times of economic hardship – “But,
I would argue, a challenge we have to rise to. Because if we don’t,
then the failure of the economies in our neighbourhood will have a
direct impact on all of us.”
Money: or rather resources. “Not just what the EU can do in direct support - important though that is - but in what it can leverage.”
This was particular important in Tunisia, Ashton said, where the EU needed to ensure its support to both the economy and civil society. “And
that means not just the long-term, not just the importance of a new
strategy but what we do now, and how we support countries – Egypt,
Tunisia and others – right now with the budgetary problems that they
have,” such as helping them to deal with the deficit when tourism has collapsed, when the economy is not working properly.
In Egypt too, there will be many challenges in the coming months and years. “We
have to be there to support them through each of those challenges and
be willing to put our resources, knowledge expertise and contacts in
favour of supporting them.”
Turning to the Middle East Peace Process, the High
Representative said the EU had brought new vigour to the Quartet in
recent months, while providing strong support to Palestinian state
building.
She again acknowledged the importance of Palestinian reconciliation
as an opportunity, as something that the EU had called for, for years. “What
is happening now is the most serious effort so far to establish unity -
which is in itself key to achieving the two-state solution.” But she added: “Let me be clear, our position on Hamas has not changed, and Israel's security remains a key concern for all of us.”
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