The calculus of hope

Some countries make excellent conference venues because they are beautiful enough to be inspiring. Others are such ironic locations, given the conference theme, that they are thought provoking. Occasionally, a country manages to be both - like Slovenia, when I visited it in mid-March.

A fellow member state, Slovenia currently holds the presidency of the European Union. Last month, it hosted the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) and the EU, of which, as an MEP, I am a member.

One of the major topics we addressed was regional integration: the economic and political advantages of such regional agreements between several neighbouring countries, the likely advantages for a continent like Africa, and the lessons that are capable of being drawn from the European experience.

Slovenia, of course, is a living example of what regional integration can offer to a country. It has come a long way from its years under communist rule. The journey can be relived, to a degree, during the 30-minute drive from the airport to the hotel in Ljubljana.

What one sees is a carbon copy of all the capitals of Eastern Europe as they were under communist rule: concrete, rectangular buildings, bleak and heartless. The assembly was, in fact, held in another surviving building from the recent past - and lived up to its unwelcoming tradition!

It was a surprise to me as Slovenia is regularly mentioned as being one of the frontrunners among the states that joined the EU since 2004. But while Slovenia's progress may be somewhat exaggerated there can be no doubting that much progress has been made.

This country of two million people spread over 780 square miles has a capital whose old part is truly impressive. An Italian piazza, a 17th-century Franciscan church with a pink façade that dominates it, stunning bridges, terracotta roofs beneath church spires, cafes and restaurants lined along a river's edge... And EU membership is helping to give the city a vibrancy that the economy needs. A beauty and vibrancy to inspire other continents to embark on regional projects of governance.

But Slovenia is also an ironic place for a conference on regionalism. What, after all, was communism, especially in the formation of Yugoslavia, if not an experiment in "regionalising" several countries that are now independent states?

And what was the result, after just over 40 years of such a regional "integration"? In the Balkans, it ended with the worst European military conflagration since World War II.

Political players who point to regional set-ups as solutions for wider international problems should therefore be careful.

The solution may have obvious advantages: economies of scale, stimulated investment, stabilisation of peaceful relations because of the deepening of interdependence, regional public goods... They are advantages that appear to trump the more parochial-seeming concerns of bilateral relations and nationalist concerns.

However, artificial regional set-ups may generate more strains than advantages and create more instability and conflict rather than the reverse. The "calculus" of integration may turn out to be flawed.

In such a case, the prudent approach may well seem to be a reverse "mathematical logic": a "long division" that breaks the problem into smaller parts so as to be able to address them on a micro-level. Regionalism and regional classification (for example, the lumping of the Pacific and the Caribbean with Africa in the ACP Assembly itself) are sometimes very artificial. The practical discrepancies between countries can undermine, not strengthen, economic strategy.

In my opinion, regional dialogue and what comes after often fail because relations between neighbours are dominated by their differences. Consequently, overt confrontation is replaced by the camouflaged opposition. One has only to see the relationship between the five North African Arab states where tension sometimes dominates and which individually tend to have stronger bilateral relations between the EU than between themselves.

The point is not that regionalism should be replaced by something less ambitious but that both strategies should be weighed and kept in mind. Let practical judgment on the ground help strategists decide which - or what kind of mix - is needed.

I mean the kind of practical judgment the EU showed when, during the recent turbulent renegotiation of the trade partnership agreement between the EU and the ACP countries, the region was subdivided into six - four just for Africa alone.

We are going to need a lot of such practical judgment over the coming months. As the 28-year-reign of Robert Mugabe appears (at the time of writing) to be drawing to a close, with, no doubt, many sighs of relief among his countrymen who have had to endure an inflation rate of 100,000 per cent (!), Zimbabwe will need help both in boring down on its internal problems and in reconnecting to the global economy.

Nor is Zimbabwe the only country where international partners will need to show such practical judgment - as the recent case of political turbulence in Kenya showed. The hopes for an effective EU-Africa strategic partnership depend on it.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.