The government has been criticised for the way it has advertised Malta’s assumption of the EU presidency. I’ve lost count of the fingers wagged at the billboard stating Malta would now be ‘centre-stage’ and showing ‘what it can do for Europe’. The real mistake (assuming the government believes its own spin) is another, however.
It’s not about knowing one’s place. It’s 2017 but the billboards are still using the rhetoric of 2003. The past is another country – and Europe today is not the Europe of 2003.
That was the year our national referendum on EU membership was held. And that was the kind of rhetoric we heard at the time (with Labour apparatchiks like Joseph Muscat pooh-poohing it away).
It was campaign rhetoric even then. But it wasn’t quite the soap bubbles it is today. At the time, euro notes and coins had just been introduced. Europe was on the brink of massive enlargement and reunification. It could fondly imagine itself to be at the cutting edge of international governance and solidarity.
What a different world it was then. Vladimir Putin was only three years into his new job and represented, at the time, a successful democratic transition from the first post-Soviet Russian President.
Although 9/11 had been a shock to the US and Europe, with security concerns throughout the decade, the Arab world was deemed to be ripe for important change coaxed by the soft power of Europe.
Some leaders were dying. Hussein of Jordan, Hafiz al-Asad of Syria, Hassan of Morocco were all buried to make way for their sons – all of whom raised hopes for gradual political liberalisation and reforms. (Especially, Bashar al-Asad. Had he not lived in London for many years and enjoyed the company of the most civilised friends there?)
The days of Saddam Hussein, tyrant of Iraq, were numbered – once more with hopes of democratisation dangled before us. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya still reigned but was giving clear signals of wanting to make important concessions to have the sanctions on Libya lifted. The US and the UK would soon be courting Libya’s heir apparent, Seif al-Islam.
On either side of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt were embarking on several years of sustained GDP growth – thanks to economic liberalisation (and crony capitalism) that was hailed in European financial reporting.
Beyond the Arab world, Teyyip Erdogan’s Islamist party had only just won a massive landslide victory, which would soon see Turkey dragged from the brink of economic collapse to many years of rapid economic growth.
Iran’s conservative leadership was being challenged by the election (at local and national levels) of reformist candidates (with the women’s vote often being crucial).
No wonder, then, that those were the days in which European think-tanks could publish tracts on how Europe would lead the 21st century thanks to its experience with ‘soft power’.
Plans were made for a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area by 2010. The draft European constitution included an article allowing for new kinds of close partnerships with states that were not members.
No one laughed when, in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged, as candidate for the French presidency, to pursue the formation of a ‘Mediterranean Union’ (later, the Union for the Mediterranean).When the non-Mediterranean EU states, led by Germany, insisted on being included, it was assumed they took the proposal seriously enough to want to sabotage it.
Malta assumes the presidency when the EU faces problems that would be daunting even if the Union were cohesive, let alone in its current fissile state
All this, then, is the background against which the rhetoric was forged of Malta being a proponent of closer Euro-Mediterranean relations, which included raising the general prosperity of the area to be able to address the complexities of irregular immigration over the southern border.
It’s true that the Arab Spring and the Syrian tragedy have made Euro-Arab relations and migration more relevant, not less. But they have raised problems so large that they have changed the political landscape of Europe and, ironically, reduced Europe’s capacity to address them.
When the prospects for Europe in 2020 were being projected at the turn of the millennium, it was assumed that Europe had a stable core – made up of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium – even if somewhat lacking in direction.
Today, the very core is unstable. In 2002, when Marine Le Pen’s father made it to the second round of France’s presidential election, everyone was shocked but no one doubted he would be massively rejected.
Today, it’s the other way round. Everyone assumes the French far right will make it to the second round, and no one is fully certain that Marine Le Pen won’t win.
Likewise, fingers are crossed about the prospects of populists in the coming elections in Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. Belgium already has a populist party included in the governing coalition.
As for the European peripheries, the problem is not a lack of direction but the different directions in which member states are marching.
Ireland, Spain and Portugal are concerned with economic security. Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are preoccupied with national security – and it’s arguable that they cannot be called liberal democracies any more.
This is no longer the Europe where France (and, to a lesser extent, Spain and Italy) took a deep interest in Mediterranean affairs in part because the region offered the opportunity of a sphere of influence that would counter-balance Germany’s weight in relations with central and eastern Europe as well as Russia. Given the coming elections in France and Italy, and the populist backlash against Arabs and Muslims, any substantial Mediterranean initiative would be tricky.
Political instincts suggest holding back. Even the current military operations in Libya, in which several European (and Arab) member states are participating, are kept under wraps.
It’s not just the European landscape that has changed. The conflagrations in Libya, Syria and Iraq, the deepening hold of authoritarianism in Turkey and Egypt, and the tremulous hold of democracy in Tunisia have given the regional problems a character that cannot be addressed by Europe alone.
Policy in the eastern Mediterranean, given the US alliance with Israel, was always subject to US leadership. In North Africa, European states had more sway. But the militarisation of the problems across the region means that both the EU, as such, and European states individually, have even less influence than before.
And the weakening of US influence doesn’t mean there’s a vacuum that can be filled in by Europe. It’s already being filled by Russia, Turkey and Iran.
Malta assumes the presidency when the EU faces problems, on migration and in the Middle East and North Africa, that would be daunting even if the Union were cohesive, let alone in its currentfissile state.
In the circumstances, the best thing we can do is to resist the showbiz of regional summits, which brought Europe nowhere in the past. And, instead, use the presidency as a platform for home-truths: sober reflection on can really be achieved today.
Who knows, in 2030 we might look back at 2017 less wryly than we look at 2003 today.
ranierfsadni@europe.com