focus: north africa
Europe’s Dilemma
The continent is struggling to deal with Arab strife toward democracy, the loss of
lucrative business deals in North Africa, and the flow of immigrants to its shores.
By Menelaos Tzafalias Athens
T
o make sense of Europe’s
stance towards events un-
folding in North Africa, one
could attempt an analogy
with the fall of Communism in 1989
or the Bosnia and Kosovo crises. An-
other image that comes to mind is that
of a French foreign minister enjoy-
ing a Christmas break in Tunisia that
was paid for by an insider from oust-
ed President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s
inner circle, who had close business
links with some members of the French
minister’s family.
That minister was Michèle Alliot-
Marie, who took no notice of the tu-
mult while on holiday and went so far
as to publicly and proudly offer mili-
tary assistance to Ben Ali, while un-
armed protesters were being killed
22 TRENDS | May 2011
in the streets. French Prime Minis-
ter Francois Fillon later confirmed
that his government had authorized a
shipment of tear gas grenades to Tu-
nisia as late as January 12. Two days
later, Ben Ali fled.
The revolt spread in full and fiery
bloom across the southern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. In Egypt, Pres-
ident Hosni Mubarak was forced to
step down after more than 30 years in
power, while his allies in Europe (nev-
er mind America) dithered as to which
side of history would prove the correct
one to pick. Luckily for them, mass
protests in Morocco and Algeria led to
minor reforms but not regime change.
There were beatings and deaths.
When trouble spread to Libya and
encircled prodigal despot Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi, European powers
finally decided to act. French President
Nicolas Sarkozy was the first Western
leader to eagerly jump at the chance
to redeem himself, possibly in order to
gain back his flailing popularity. Alli-
ot-Marie was forced to resign and was
replaced by Alain Juppe: ironically, a
politician who in the recent past was
convicted of misusing public funds –
one of the main reasons why people in
North Africa had taken to the streets.
French jets were the first to bomb
pro-Gaddafi forces, in a United Na-
tions-mandated and NATO-concert-
ed effort to stop the killing of inno-
cent civilians and enforce a no-fly
zone. As a by-product, rebel groups
started to gain international recogni-
Corbis
tion as a possible government-in-wait-
May 2011 | TRENDS 23
 focus: north africa
Another image that comes to mind is that of a
French minister enjoying a Christmas break in Tunisia
ing. At the time TRENDS went to press,
Gaddafi was still clutching on to power
despite NATO strikes, the flight of key
government officials and the earlier loss
of support from allies, among them It-
aly’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
who, not only was an ally, but had per-
sonal business links to Gaddafi.
Berlusconi did not decide to stand up
for human rights and allow the bombing
of Libya by NATO forces just to avoid
scrutiny, but it did help. Moreover, since
he was fighting for his domestic politi-
cal survival, just like Sarkozy, Berlusco-
ni made sure to throw into the mix the
migrant question, which is of high im-
portance to Italian voters – and certain-
ly to his conservative government allies,
24 TRENDS | May 2011
Grapheast/AFP
like Interior Minister Roberto Maroni.
The Italian island of Lampedusa, just
off the coast of Tunisia, is being over-
run by migrants, mostly Tunisians seek-
ing a better future in Europe. “We are in
a friendly country to resolve the prob-
lem,” Berlusconi said when visiting Tu-
nisia in early April to get the new gov-
ernment to clamp down on migrants. The
latest report by the United Nations’ High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is
more interesting than Berlusconi’s fears.
Asylum figures in 2010 actually fell “to
almost half their 2001 levels.” Niels W.
Frenzen, a professor at the University of
Southern California (USC) and an ex-
pert on maritime immigration enforce-
ment, agreed with the report’s findings.
A possible “biblical exodus” of migrants
has yet to materialize. The real danger is
that people trying to flee the conflict in
North Africa might in fact be blockaded
because of the significant military pres-
ence in the area, he said. Developments
in Libya constitute the last piece of the
North Africa puzzle and may offer some
explanation as to the awkward way Euro-
pean powers are reacting in the face of his-
torical change in the region. “I am broadly
supportive of the intervention. It seems to
be a humanitarian intervention, sometimes
known as a liberal intervention. Saving
lives, not changing governments,” Dav-
id Davis, a member of Parliament in the
UK told TRENDS. “Clearly there will be
other national interests involved, but in my
view these are largely irrelevant concerns
when preventing mass murder by a cruel
dictator,” he said.
When it comes to European coun-
tries’ ‘‘national interests’’, two issues
succinctly emerge. The first is that of
security. The other is that of business.
Democratic European governments have
found that supporting despotic regimes
is the best way to prevent radical Islam-
ist forces from gaining power and to sty-
mie the outreach of terrorism to Europe.
When looking for a local political part-
ner, Western powers also tend to confuse
the granting of favours as a more desir-
able qualification than competency or
popular support. “Fighting terrorism is
a separate issue,” said John Brady Kies-
ling, a former US diplomat who served
in Greece, Armenia, Morocco and Isra-
el. He finds it hard to justify the policy of
intervention in Libya in terms of fighting
terrorism in the wider region.
With regard to its business links, Eu-
rope is the dominant economic force in
North Africa. And profits are handsome.
Prior to the unrest, more than 20 percent
of the oil imported by Austria, Ireland
and Italy was Libyan crude, according to
the International Energy Agency, the en-
ergy advisor to industrialized countries.
Italy, of course takes center stage. Ital-
ian oil company Eni SpA in 2007 signed
May 2011 | TRENDS 25
 focus: North africa
The real danger is that people trying to flee the
conflict in North Africa might be blockaded
a $28 billion deal for production and ex-
ploration up to 2042. A quarter of Italy’s
oil and ten percent of Italy’s natural gas
come from Eni projects in the North Af-
rica state. Libya, in turn, holds signifi-
cant investments in Italy, such as a stake
in Unicredit bank and a share in football
team Juventus. In comparison, the British
presence in Libya is small, even though
there was much coverage of how Brit-
ain’s BP came to acquire an oil explora-
tion license, amid calls to investigate the
deal at a time when the Scottish govern-
ment had decided to release from pris-
on a Libyan man convicted of the 1988
Lockerbie airline bombing over Scot-
land. Though, Early political support to
26 TRENDS | May 2011
the Libyan rebels’ Provisional Transi-
tional National Council, could help some
states regain lost deals. Mustafa Abdel
Jalil, head of the council, has said fu-
ture economic agreements will be direct-
ed towards those who supported the rebels
first, singling out Italy, France and Qatar.
As for Algeria, it is a key player in
the European gas market, while in Tu-
nisia and Morocco, major European in-
vestments have always been part of the
landscape, especially in tourism, manu-
facturing and mining. European business
interests did play a role in the overthrow
of the former Tunisian regime, but only
by pure accident, as they sought to profit
from the modernization and privatization
Getty/Gallo Images
Reuters
of Tunisia’s Internet and mobile telepho-
ny network. As the world came to know,
the revolution in Tunisia spread quickly
thanks to the quality and efficiency of its
private telecommunications network. The
two private operators were Orange Tuni-
sia, where France Telecom had a stake,
and Tunisiana, a company set up with fi-
nancial assistance from a British bank
and a French bank. What the world did
not come to know until much later, was
that both of Tunisia’s private telecommu-
nications providers were the respective
fiefs of Marwan Ben Mabrouka and Sa-
kher El Materi, both sons-in-law of the
ousted president.
Financing regime change is not an
easy or cheap task, given that both sides
of the border – where the revolt is happen-
ing and where support is coming – need
financial means. ‘‘Europe is not putting
its money where its mouth is,” said Vic-
tor Pou, a former European Commission
official who also works as a consultant
for Cevital, Algeria’s biggest private com-
pany. “Europe has acted as a magnet for
a lot of countries when [they] wanted to
democratize themselves.’’
But European Union membership is
not possible for North African countries,
said Pou. Instead, Europe can put for-
ward a “new Marshall Plan” and help in
the process of building democratic in-
stitutions, as it did with former dictator-
ships Greece, Spain and Portugal and Cen-
tral and Eastern European countries in the
1990s. “The European Union is only giv-
ing to the region 900 million euros per
year,’’ said Pou. ‘‘It’s peanuts. It means
four euros per person per year. If you want
to really help the region, admit the prod-
ucts the region is producing competitive-
ly.’’ The US Marshall plan helped rebuild
post-World War Two Europe, but it took
years to transform the continent into a
fully-fledged working economy. In the
case of North Africa, it is uncertain who
will put money forward to rebuild these
economies. Some Western states, such as
the US maybe wary of repeating an Iraq
scenario, where money spent on recon-
struction was often linked to lucrative deals
to officials close to the US administration.
Also at a time when Europe is tightening
its purse and implementing austerity meas-
ures that have inspired home-grown pro-
tests, it is difficult to see how these coun-
tries will be generous in coughing up cash
for North Africa. “Democracies are easy
when there’s enough money to go around,”
said former US diplomat Kiesling.
Another question remains: Will Eu-
rope open its borders and markets to the
free movement of people, services, goods
and capital from the ‘‘other’’ side of the
Mediterranean? All these years of arbi-
trary aid schemes and directed invest-
ments have lined the pockets of those
who proved to be on the wrong side of
history in the Middle East and North
Africa region.
“What is happening now in North Af-
rica was beyond fantasy,” said Spyros
Makridakis, Emeritus Professor of Deci-
sion Sciences at INSEAD business school
in France and Abu Dhabi. If the EU re-
forms its protectionist Common Agricul-
tural Policy, lowers tariffs and opens up
its markets to North African products, it
will provide long-term benefits, especial-
ly as more Africans will find jobs local-
ly and will have less of an urge to immi-
grate. “But which politicians think in the
long term?” Makridakis queried.
May 2011 | TRENDS 27