Brussels 27/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - The academic, Jean-Pierre Filiu, lecturer at the Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris, has said that, faced with upheaval in the Mediterranean and West Africa, the EU and its different institutions and agencies “sometimes, unfortunately, gives the impression that it has no influence” on how events unfold. Filiu was invited by the Robert Schuman Foundation to draw up a picture of this dangerous situation.
According to the academic, “this low profile is justified neither for financial reasons nor for strategic considerations” and he adds that, “it is crucial for Europe to be visible and active in the southern Mediterranean, where most (substantial) funds paid out are used less to promote necessary developments than maintain an increasingly expensive status quo”. He said that “we need to finish with this 'lame consensus' on humanitarian aid, which is often presented as the only response to major crises”. He urged European diplomatic efforts to “expand the circle of its interlocutors in the Arab world, beyond the Islamists, to include new forces emerging from an extremely diverse landscape”.
Filiu affirmed that, “contrary to all the interpretations of the 'Islamist Winter', the Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt are better able to assess their domestic weaknesses than anyone else”. He believes that this is because “they are afraid of losing the next elections in these two countries and have taken a number of initiatives in the hope of transforming an unfavourable situation on the ground into structural advantages”. He highlighted the example of Tunisia, which triggered the Arab Spring and explained that “we have entered the second wave of this long-term historic upheaval… because the local Islamists, the Ennahda Party, have squandered the capital of popularity they notched up in autumn 2011, in record time”.
He believes that the Libyan transition is probably going to be “laborious” but that, overall, it is respecting the timeframe set out after the fall of the dictator, Colonel Gaddafi. On the other hand, he identifies a number of mistakes in European policy toward Syria and he calls for the transitional authorities to be recognised and for the EU to break with the power still in place in the country.
On the Sahel, the EU's line has consisted of a disparate response and is also criticised. He explained that “this is less to do with intra-European differences than the obvious deadweight of bureaucratic inertia in times of crisis”. Filiu stated that he believes it is clear that the “Malian crisis calls for a European rapid response force that is ultimately up and running and thus as further deepening of European defence”. (FB/transl.fl)