It was with great pleasure that I participated as a guest in the Querença International Literature Festival (FLIQ), last May. On that occasion, I made a small speech on the Mediterranean and European Policy. These are the words that are registered here.
The southern and eastern Mediterranean will be a real litmus test of European intentions with regard to their common foreign and security policy. The latest images of a “Mediterranean Dead Sea” are an impressive testimony and a memory that will never fade in European politics for years to come.
On the other hand, the threshold between internal security and collective security, as camps belonging to different political areas, was largely crossed with the refugee crisis and the collapse of African states on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
In 2016, the African continent seems to have unleashed all the demons of the distant past to come to terms with history. We are talking about revolutionary impulses, fundamentalism and fundamentalism, racism and xenophobia, international terrorism, rampant unemployment, large population migrations, criminal networks and associations trafficking all kinds of goods (people, drugs, weapons), of poverty and epidemics, of ecological disasters, of mafia wars in large urban metropolises, of hunger and misery.
The Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, at the gates of the European Union, is the opportunity for a Marshall Plan for this part of the globe. It is the only great task that is worthy of real political responsibility.
If the European Union wants to assume this historic responsibility, it will perhaps have won a letter of manumission to be an authentic European Political Union, worthy of the name and indebted to Jacques Delors, who well deserves this tribute.
The Union for the Mediterranean, an opportunity for the European Union
Time is running out for the European Union with regard to its political responsibility in the face of the numerous problems that are accumulating on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean sea is not a fire barrier that separates the two banks, but it looks more and more like a huge mass grave, where many immigrants from all corners of the world die every day. Every day, the European Union plays on its international reputation, whatever that may be, in the face of daily dramas.
To fulfill its political responsibility in the face of these daily dramas, the European Union would have to devise a Delors Plan for the Mediterranean Union, the younger brother of the south bank, in the form of a large association agreement between the two banks of the Mare Nostrum.
The obstacles are, however, immense. From the outset, the economic and financial policy that is dominant in the European Union today does not allow for a European adventure of this grandeur.
For this reason, instead of running a Delors Plan, we are building refugee camps and raising physical barriers to the movement of people in the Schengen area.
Rather than jointly administering a major infrastructure and public works program, we are allowing organized crime networks to take over important sectors of what is left of the rogue states. Instead of mobilizing the resources of the G20 for the regional reconstruction of the Mediterranean countries, we are squandering the contributions of the 2nd world countries in wars and crossed interests.
It is the combination of all these complex and contradictory reasons that make the Mediterranean scenario very unpromising, but, for that very reason, much more demanding and demanding more and better European Political Europe.
The international reputation of a European Union of continental dimension cannot be imprisoned or hostage to a caricature of European politics, as no problem of internal politics will be immune to what happens on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
The European institutions and their leaders, the domestic democracies and their leaders, will have to explain to the respective public opinion that the “luck” of European and national policy is very important for the Mediterranean external dimension of that policy. It is a sword that hangs nervously over the head of every European citizen and over the political relevance of the European institutions in bringing the European project to fruition.
The solemn announcement of a Delors Plan for the Mediterranean and the simultaneous creation of the Union for the Mediterranean would have the impact of a great European purpose and would immediately add international reputation to the European Union.
It would thus be the kick-off for the European Political Union in its external and international political dimension. The Union for the Mediterranean would immediately focus attention and positive expectations, which the Delors Plan would serve to further leverage.
In managing expectations and political confidence, we would be initiating a new cycle of international politics and also a new hope in the lives of people in particular.
The announcement of a Delors Plan and a Union for the Mediterranean would also have the merit of progressively reducing political and religious radicalism in these regions, since the assumption of political responsibilities reduces, in principle, contestation and protest.
And if, in the medium term, with the support of the Delors Plan and the European Union, the Union for the Mediterranean project effectively becomes a Mediterranean community with annual growth rates between 5 and 10%, we can imagine how important the benefits would be. the south bank could offer the north bank. It's worth thinking about.
The European Union and its younger sister, the Union for the Mediterranean, deserve a second chance. For the benefit of citizens on both shores, strange as that may seem.
The final question remains: how to convince European citizens of the goodness of a Union for the Mediterranean, when, at the same time, the same Union does not provide convincing proof that it is capable of solving their most immediate problems in terms of domestic policy, of growth , employment and welfare?
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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