No one had expected the Arab Spring! Nowadays it makes us wonder how Arabs will be able to build a State subject to the rule of law and sustainable...

No one had expected the Arab Spring!
Nowadays it makes us wonder how Arabs will be able to build a State subject to the rule of law and sustainable economies. Diplomacy, economy and society must be rethought to meet the aspirations of this young Arab generation to a new model of development, a strong legal system, a strong regional integration, all in a revamped context. Meanwhile, the Europeans deal with internal and external challenges and with an extremely difficult decade just begun, where peace, democracy, citizenship, economic prosperity and social development may be called into question.

Faced with the events of the Arab Spring, we shall stay far away from fear, bad advisors, and choose innovation, peace, citizenship, democracy and prosperity in a new framework that meets the challenges of the twenty-first century. These are enormous challenges. For the European Union and for the Arab countries the issue of a new architecture for their cooperation gives us the opportunity to find a double positive response to our internal and external challenges and to the aspirations of the Arab world, on the basis of a true dialogue with each other.

To find this double hit, must we go beyond partnerships as the Union for the Mediterranean or the Neighborhood Policy provided by the European Commission Communication on 10 May 2011?
The Italian Council of the European Movement proposes something new, that is, building the "Euro-Mediterranean Community (EUMED)” – in addition to the partnerships, "according to the different forms", proposed by the European Union to the Union for the Mediterranean, Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly and Anna Lindh Foundation.

This community is not intended to replace the EU enlargement process towards the Balkans (Croatia and then Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Federation of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania) and Turkey. We propose that this community be initially limited to countries going on the way of constitutional reform and with a new strong institutional, legal and democratic regional framework, opened to all North Africa people and to the dialogue with Sub-Saharan African countries. It is going to be like a new ring involving the European Union and its neighbours, showing an innovative approach inspired by the beginning of the CZECH 50s and the Helsinki process of the mid-1970s.

Do not forget that the European Communities were instruments of peace and prosperity because they were equipped with institutions and common law (which are not insured or provided by partnerships). For this historical reason, we think that a "community" formed from the expectations of the civil societies of the South and North shores of the Mediterranean and inspired by the historical experience of the CZECH could represent a new point in the Euro-Mediterranean relations.

For the Italian Council of the European Movement, the objective of the next proposals is to extend to the Neighbourhood Policy – planned by the Prodi Commission in 2003 – the EU instruments of peace, which are: eliminating State violence (Democratic Governance), eliminating class violence and corruption (social solidarity), associating the southern Mediterranean countries, which is a key to prosperity, and promoting the European and Mediterranean Sea security in the Twenty-First Century. Prosperity and security are related to the shock that might occur over the next decade because of problems such as the "rarefaction" in the energy, environment, food, water and raw materials sectors. These concern a set of common goods that the nation states are no more able to guarantee to their citizens.
The double positive solution proposed and the ability to recover from the crisis, with a long-term vision, must consider the nationalist tendencies and the "every man for himself" approach growing in the European Union. Populism, which spreads like a metastasis in our political classes, is feeding on hate and, at the same time, it influences the political parties during the national and local elections.

To oppose nationalism and populism we must produce prosperity in a new way. To achieve it, we need a new vision of the European social pact. It has involved many stages and formulas: the project for peace (the CZECH and Common Market), the project for economic growth and free movement of goods, capital, people and services, the single currency (the domestic market, the Euro, the Lisbon Strategy, and Europe 2020), a project for a Europe of citizens, the public space of democracy (the election by direct universal suffrage of the European Parliament, the right of citizens' initiative), of freedom, justice and security, fundamental rights (the Charter of Nice, the Copenhagen criteria, the freedom of movement of persons in the Schengen Agreement, and in particular the mobility of students, teachers and researchers). The European agreement has thus provided the four pillars (peace, prosperity, democracy and citizenship), each of which must be consolidated and strengthened in a more integrated and inclusive Union.

In this spirit, the Italian Council of the European Movement considers that the project, the method and the agenda should be discussed to continue the journey to the United States of Europe – as envisaged in the Ventotene Manifesto by Spinelli. A “Euro-Mediterranean Community” could revitalize the process of European integration because it would be a new way to deal with vital issues that have an impact on peace, prosperity, democracy and citizenship. These are the challenges of the economy, the environment, migration and the enlargement of the EU borders. The Euro-Med Community would have four ‘baskets’ to address:
- Peace and Human Rights, access to information, freedom of expression, participation and justice
- Green Economy¹, water, energy, food, green and connected cities;
- Integrated Economic Region²;
- Youth.

The Helsinki process (which contributed to end the Soviet empire) had three baskets as well: security in Europe, cooperation in economy, in science, in technology, in environment and in the humanitarian field, which was a prelude to the broader field of protection of human rights.

The first goal is peace and democracy. Peace is the area where European integration has reached its major successes. Peace at the external borders and domestic civil peace are two valuable public goods that must be safeguarded. Nowadays new crises (financial, resources, climate) have replaced a set of various crises that have marked the history of humanity, aimed to conquer spaces and territories.

They could lead humanity to war for energy or water, and resume the conquest of space, especially agricultural. The desert of North Africa is going to play a key role in the energy supply for Europe, starting from the solar energy. Peace and democracy both presuppose a rule of law, and judges whom citizens can have access to. The respect of fundamental rights can be enforced against the states, which shall accept to respect the mechanisms of humanitarian intervention and mediation.

From the European point of view, it is essential for us to include in the budget adequate resources to enable the EU to be equipped with the necessary tools for "peace keeping" and "peace building" . In this context, one might imagine to give the Union exclusive competence in the areas of cooperation to development and humanitarian aid, which today are considered by the Treaty of Lisbon a shared competence. On the contrary, the Spinelli’s draft of 1984 stipulated that they would become a Union's exclusive competence in a ten-year transitional period, respecting the international agreements in force. Following the same principle, relations with neighbouring countries – considered privileged under Article 8 of the Treaty of Lisbon – could become an exclusive competence of the European Union after a ten-year transitional period.

The second basket is the big market, as it was provided for in the objectives of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995. Today, while Asia goes on to become the planet's most powerful economic area and China emerges in the role of the main world nation, the same that it had been from the year 1000 (70% of the world GDP) until the Industrial Revolution (14% of GDP in 1880, but 5% in 1950), the Arab countries are facing a much more open chance with China, ever more present in the Mediterranean and African areas.

We must be conscious that things are moving very quickly on two floors: on the one hand, the EU is no more the obligated economic partner of the Arab countries. On the other hand, Europe's soft power in the world will become increasingly dependent on our ability to propose to the Mediterranean countries to participate in a big market. It must be capable of responding to the challenges of energy, environment and agriculture, as it has been recently proposed by Professor Mario Monti. In this context, we believe that the EU should have the tools to help Mediterranean countries to establish and develop an intra-regional trade among them, now virtually nonexistent.

With the Euro-Mediterranean Community, we could have an extraordinary opportunity to make effective and efficient the UN program called "green economy in the sustainable development context and the fight against poverty," which would thus become the third basket of the Community. It could establish itself in the world because slow economic growth and demographic constraints on the use of resources will not leave us other choice but to innovate in terms of technology and society. This third basket would concern energy, water, food, including the common agricultural policy, commodities, the green cities connected to each other by an ecologically-sustainable transport infrastructure.

We believe it is time to conceive a new dream and give new impetus to progress. Our strategic interest is to plan and realize it with the other Mediterranean Basin countries. However, we should not do it against the others but with the others: the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, along with the African Union and the Arab League, and talking with other forms of regional integration like Mercosur.

Don’t forget that this year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the interdependence declaration given in July 1961 by John F. Kennedy. The European Union is now facing a triple choice (the European "trilemma") which appears as a vital challenge: financial stringency, investment in green infrastructures and maintenance of the welfare state and public services in the context of an ageing population.

In this spirit, the European Union must define an inter-generational pact that will consider this triple choice and the impact on the young generations in the EU and outside, as we are told by the young people of Puerta del Sol and the young people of Tunis.

The European Union has lived successive and spectacular enlargements. They have found their raison d'être in many aims: first of all the enlargement seen as an extension of the single market and as a lever for growth. It could be also a tool for strengthening peace (think of the Balkans) and the geo-political role of the European Union (Turkey). But these enlargements have also led to a Europe in which populism and the contempt for the other are growing, and where the construction of the European Union becomes more and more an intergovernmental process, therefore weak and undemocratic.

Here is the project of the Euro-Mediterranean Community that we intend to submit to a public debate:

“It is the European Union as such that should have a seat in the Euro-Mediterranean Community.
The European Union would keep its institutions, if necessary reinforced in their supra-national dimension, and its center of gravity would remain in the triangle Brussels-Luxembourg- Strasbourg, while the Euro-Mediterranean Community could endow itself with institutions of its own partly inspired by the ECSC experience:
- a High Authority composed of three men and three women would be based in Istanbul;
- a Senate composed of 2 representatives for each country would be based in Tunis;
- a Court of Justice would be based in Strasbourg;
- in due course, an Inter-Parliamentary Conference will be based in Gaza.

Its center of gravity will be delimited in a first phase by the square Istanbul-Strasbourg-Tunis- Gaza. The European Union shall declare itself in favor of the entry in this Community of an Israel-Palestine Confederation or Federation, as proposed by Professor Jo Weiler. And when this will happen, Jerusalem could become the capital city of the Euro-Mediterranean Community”.

Would it be foolish to expect to see the European Union represent the 27 within the Euro-Mediterranean Community? A mad project to envisage progress and prosperity in the Euro-Mediterranean area? A folly to imagine a new architecture to exit permanently from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Before declaring as madness all these proposals, let's hear what the citizens want to say about freedom, peace, democracy, prosperity, solidarity, cultures and religions. Let's listen to what they think of these issues: the four baskets and the charter of a Euro-Mediterranean Community.

A Diplomatic Conference on the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Community involving, in addition to the European Union and the Arab countries on their way to democracy, the representatives of the African Union and the Arab League, should be preceded by a Conference of the Euro-Mediterranean Civil Society – as happened in 1948 at The Hague on the eve of the European integration process, or as happened in the early 1990s at the Helsinki Citizens Assembly. This conference should bring together leaders of the social-networks revolution, professors of law, history, economy, sociology, architecture and new technologies, coming from both sides of the Mediterranean and working in projects for the green economy, young people and migrants organizations, voluntary organizations and development experts. The conference should be organized by the European International Movement and the Council of Europe in collaboration with the European Commission and the Economic and Social Council, in the framework of the international network of economic and social committees. It would be appropriate to involve also the Committee of Regions.

We propose to organize that conference in Tunis in 2012, as was suggested by the board of the European Movement International, and to start the project on 25 September 2011 on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the Perugia – Assisi March. Similarly, the diplomatic conference should be preceded by a financial conference on the mobilization of public (EIB, EBRD, World Bank) and private (banks, pension funds, foundations, European and Arab groups) capitals, to support a financial project such as a “Marshall Plan for the Mediterranean” (in its historic meaning), as proposed by the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero and now revived by President Obama, who talked, on the same occasion, about institutional building. An important signal in the right direction has been given by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), set up after the end of the Soviet system, which gave 2.5 billion euros to the countries involved in the "Arab Spring", which add up to those of the World Bank and the Gulf Co-operation Council.

The peoples of the Southern Mediterranean countries and the Europeans must reflect on all these issues, becoming aware of the fact that, like it or not, we are on the eve of a great change of the planet and humanity. This change will soon be imposed by the shock linked to the problems of energy, raw materials, water and environment. The Europeans and the peoples of the Southern Mediterranean countries have the opportunity to be an example and see how the Mediterranean, cradle of our civilization, can contribute to a big transition, building a new community of values and rights, beyond cultural differences, to ensure prosperity and to let humanity take a new step towards peace and democracy.


¹ Rio +20 Agenda. See UNEP’s Green Economy Report
² As proposed by the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) and by professor Mario Monti