ANALYSIS: EU preparing fresh North Africa policy, but can it deliver?

By Alvise Armellini Mar 2, 2011, 17:29 GMT

Brussels - The European Union was wrong-footed by North Africa's democratic upheavals, which unseated regimes with which the bloc had developed close ties over the years.

With Libya's Moamer Gaddafi battling to avoid the fate of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosny Mubarak of Egypt, calls are now multiplying within the bloc for a radical change of approach, ahead of an extraordinary summit on March 11.

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he hoped the meeting would serve to 'crystalise' thinking on how best to support economic and political reforms in the Arab region.

'The instruments, the institutions, the policies that we deploy in North Africa and the Middle East need to be very significantly revamped,' Clegg, himself a former member of the European parliament, said during a visit to EU headquarters on Wednesday.

Critics say that the EU's current neighbourhood policy (ENP) has been channeling too little money to the bloc's southern shores, and with too few conditions attached on the respect of democracy and human rights.

Earlier in the week, the official responsible for the ENP acknowledged the point.

Enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule said the EU should reach out to 'the crowds in the streets of Tunis, Cairo and elsewhere' rather than interact 'with dictators who are, as we speak, spilling the blood of their own people with utter disregard for human life.'

'We must show humility about the past ... Too many of us fell prey to the assumption that authoritarian regimes were a guarantee of stability in the region,' he told the European Parliament.

His words echoed EU President Herman Van Rompuy's frank admission that the West had turned a blind eye to Mubarak's autocratic ways because he was a key moderating influence in the Middle East peace process.

'Until just a few weeks ago, Egypt was certainly not an issue, certainly not in terms of human rights. People preferred stability,' Van Rompuy said last month.

So far, the EU's talk of doing more to support democratic change has been matched by limited financial resources.

Tunisia is the only country to have received concrete pledges of fresh aid, but a 17-million-euro (23.5-million-dollar) 'immediate assistance package' was met with incredulity by local officials.

'When (EU foreign policy chief Catherine) Ashton talked about 17 millions, our minister thought he had misheard and asked: 'millions or billions?' Tunisia's Industry Minister Afif Chelbi said during a visit to Rome last month.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso promised Wednesday that much more is to come.

'(We) have a crucial set of political and economic tools that we are already deploying and we will strengthen further in the run up to next week's extraordinary European Council,' he said.

'The events unfolding in our southern neighbourhood are a rendez-vous with history. Europe will rise to this challenge and support the current transformation process,' he assured.

But ominously, those words echoed a pledge made when Europe was confronted with another crisis on its doorstep.

In 1992, as Yugoslavia was disintegrating into a civil war which produced the worst atrocities since the Second World War, the then Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos infamously remarked, 'the hour of Europe has come.'

Protestors in Cairo, Tunis, Benghazi and elsewhere must hope that the bloc's response to the crisis is much better this time.

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