Brussels, 05/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Union's double standard towards leaders of authoritarian regimes is flabbergasting. While our principles and political statements denounce the human rights abuses and corruption they perpetrate - crimes which would carry prison sentences - in the EU these people are often treated as respectable citizens when they do private business within our borders.
It has been revealed that Gaddafi and his family owned property worth billions in London and that Saif Gaddafi studied at the London School of Economics. In Egypt, with about 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line, Mubarak and his family have an estimated wealth of between $50 billion and $70 billion - much of it invested around the globe, according to an IHS Global Insight report. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia, also owned property in Austria. It is reported that Than Shwe of Burma has diverted billions of dollars of his country's natural gas revenue to foreign accounts. According to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, is suspected of siphoning off $9 billion from his country's oil boom and depositing much of it in British banks.
Any EU policy against authoritarian regimes is undermined by having no equivalent redress when their leaders act within the borders of the EU. Such double standards not only let authoritarian regimes flourish, but also weaken the moral authority of the EU and hinder us from achieving our foreign policy objectives. A further insidious consequence is that, by allowing such people to hold property and financial assets within the EU, it also provides them with the capacity and incentive to continue in power.
Over the coming weeks, I hope to steer through the Foreign Affairs Committee and the European Parliament a report which makes a series of recommendations to the European Council and Commission to address this issue. The aim is to build coherence, consistency and efficacy into EU policy against authoritarian regimes. Considering the examples of authoritarian leaders above, there are three salient aspects of EU policy that my report addresses. The first recommendation is that the EU must define clearly what constitutes an authoritarian regime. Hitherto, regimes which repressed their people, denied them the right to freedom of speech, vote and association have sometimes been treated as our allies. Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain should all have been categorised as authoritarian regimes. Secondly, the report recommends that, when regimes are indeed categorised as authoritarian regimes, no exceptions must be made in our policy towards them. For too long, European countries made overtures to Gaddafi ignoring the fact that both UN and EU sanctions were in place.
The most important aspect of the report is the recommendation on revising and renewing EU sanctions policy. Sanctions are one of the most powerful and most common tools of the EU foreign policy toolkit. As one of the world's largest trade entities and often the largest trading partner of third countries, there is serious leverage available. However, too often sanctions are weakened by being breached or due to slack implementation within the borders of the EU. A sanctions policy that has real capacity to change the behaviour of authoritarian leaders will be one that prevents these leaders from holding property or assets within the EU, prohibits authoritarian leaders and their associates from travelling for leisure purposes within the EU and deprives them of the benefit of children in EU countries. My report makes just such policy recommendations.
It is time for a genuine debate about how we treat leaders of authoritarian regimes within EU borders. We have too often made foreign policy decisions based on geographical and commercial interests. That is now shown to have been wrong. We need to act against the leaders of authoritarian regimes whilst they are in power. Freezing assets and issuing travel bans on fallen leaders is too little too late. Moreover, our policy against authoritarian leaders must treat them within the borders of the EU as we would wish them to be treated in third countries. I hope that this report will be approved by the European Parliament and then given due consideration by the Council and that it will go some way to building an approach towards authoritarian regimes that is proactive, effective, and consistent with our values.
Sir Graham Watson