The second “5+5 Summit”, held in Malta earlier this month, was the first time since the Arab Spring that leaders of southern Europe met with their Maghrebi counterparts. For the five European nations of Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Malta, as well for the five North African countries of Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, the trip to La Valetta was necessary to exchange notes about developments since last year.
Despite the existence of a number of institutionalised Euro-Mediterranean frameworks, the “5+5 Dialogue” has remained a practical trans-Mediterranean venue because of its “informal” character and its “project-oriented” focus. Tunisian Euro-Med observer, Fethi B’chir, calls the western Mediterranean basin the “useful Mediterranean”, since it is less plagued by conflicts and boasts of greater cultural and historic proximity and intensive human exchanges than its eastern part.
With the Malta Summit, a new cast of actors entered the stage. Leaders of both Libya and Tunisia have been toppled and both countries are today in the midst of an arduous democratic transition. South European nations, traditionally the closest partners of the Maghreb, are in the throes of major economic crises. The overall unemployment rate in Spain, for instance, reached 25.1 per cent last August. More than half of the Spaniards under 25 are unemployed.
French writer and diplomat Daniel Rondeau described the Malta summit as “a meeting of mostly convalescent nations, still searching for a way to achieve freedom for their people or to come out of an economic crisis.” He thinks, however, it is “re-assuring” that “countries like Spain and Tunisia, who are engaged in a daily struggle for economic or political metamorphosis, continue to be committed to preparing the future together”.
However, the nations of both the northern and southern rims of the Mediterranean had no choice but to resume their dialogue. The economic stakes are huge. The European Union (EU) accounts for 67 per cent of Maghreb countries’ exports and 65 per cent of their total trade. Between 2006 and 2010, European exports to the Maghreb increased by more than 50 per cent.
The Europeans, who have consistently called (albeit quietly) for political reform in North Africa are faced with a paradox today: When democratisation has finally knocked on the door of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, Europe finds itself in the middle of a financial and social crisis of its own. Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development warns that “the difficulties in the Eurozone and the slowing economies in the European Union” do make it harder to transfer huge amounts to Arab nations and make it harder for those nations to export their goods to “the troubled EU”. He is sarcastically blunt about this quandary: “The truth is that the Arab world has chosen a bad time to revolt,” he says.
This bitter paradox was on the minds of all the participants in La Valetta. Still, European nations expressed awareness of the need to help their southern neighbours. Speaking to summit participants, Lawrence Gonzi, Prime Minister of Malta, noted that despite “the negative pressures on trade, investment and tourism”, it remains “essential” to help post-revolutionary governments in the Maghreb meet their economic challenges. “Governments need to deliver growth and jobs in response to the economic frustrations of the youth that were a driving force of the revolutions,” he said.
However, some Maghreb watchers criticise the “ambivalent” attitude of the Europeans, who have been always, before anything else, wary of “instability” south of their Mediterranean shores. Ahmad Driss, director of the Centre d’Etudes Méditerranéennes et Internationales (CEMI) in Tunis, offers a critique of the past European approach: “Exclusive priority was always granted to securitisation efforts. The European Union opted to barricade itself against possible ‘plagues’ coming from the South: Uncontrolled migration flows, terrorism, disruptions in its energy imports”.
The Valetta dialogue demonstrated, nonetheless, greater sensitivity to Maghrebi concerns. “The management of migratory flows cannot be done through control methods only,” read the Malta Summit Declaration. The same declaration reflected concern about a variety of other possible sources of regional insecurity, including “the dissemination of weapons and unsecured material, which is threatening regional stability”, (a clear reference to the proliferation of weapons from Libya since the collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi regime); and the situation in Mali. Many Europeans feel the deterioration of the situation in northern Mali represents a direct threat to their own security. Bruce Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says: “European intelligence services are already detecting the migration of European jihadists to training bases in Mali, just as earlier generations of jihadists went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train with Al Qaida’s core.”
In tackling such concerns, Europe can count on its common security doctrine. But the Maghreb countries still have to devise a more unified approach in this domain. Algerian expert Abdennour Ben Antar bemoans the absence of “any idea of collective security” in the “Maghreb strategic landscape”.
Maghreb countries must, in fact, move faster towards greater and faster integration. The continuing lack of integration in the Maghreb is thought to deprive its five member-countries of 2 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP growth. The lack of integration of Maghreb economies is in fact striking. According to the World Bank, trade among the Maghreb countries accounts for only 3 per cent of the region’s total trade, while trade within the EU accounts for nearly 64 per cent of that region’s trade.
The cost of “the Non-Maghreb” (as the cost of lack of regional integration is referred to by experts) is also felt by North Africa’s European partners. “The benefits of a closer integration in the Maghreb will be shared by citizens of partner countries and also the neighbouring nations, including the European Union,” said the European Commission President, Manuel Barroso, in Malta — a notion that will probably be on the minds of Arab Maghreb leaders when they meet later this year in Tunis.
Oussama Romdhani is a former Tunisian minister of communication.
