Barcelona:
Inclusion within Diversity
Álvaro
de Vasconcelos
The Barcelona Process can be seen as an exercise in
the politics of inclusion. It aims to establish a regional group – over time, a
community of democratic states – in the Euro-Mediterranean region, a region
that contains a massively pluralist cultural and religious reality. It is, furthermore, based on the principle of
unity within diversity. In this respect, the process of Turkish democratisation
and its accession to the European Union is a powerful stimulus to
Euro-Mediterranean integration in that it illustrates the innately positive
outcomes of a logic that emphasises what disparate individuals and entities
share through democratic inclusion, rather than focusing on civilisational
cleavages or highlighting imagined or real divides. This is a crucial point to bear in mind in
order to prevent a rhetoric approach to cultural dialogue from taking the place
of the critical debate about democracy and human rights.
Identity-Based
Nationalism: The Curse of Our Times
The events of 11 September provided us with terrible additional proof (if
such were needed) of the resurgence of identity-based nationalism rooted in a
totalitarian vision. It is a vision
which, in its absolute rejection of fundamental rights, adds up to nothing less
than an overwhelming capacity to provoke destruction and cause human suffering.
Bosnia, which was subjected
to the barbarian brutality of Serbian identity-based nationalism, and Rwanda,
where the international community impassively permitted genocide on an almost
unimaginable scale, only differ from other parts of the world experiencing
similar processes in terms of magnitude and duration of their experiences. The
humanitarian crisis in the Sudan, again of catastrophic proportions (officially
declared to be genocide although strangely eliciting no appropriate response),
shows that limiting international security to combating transnational terrorism
is not only mistaken but costly in terms of human lives. At the same time, political
parties with the primary purpose of defending national identities threatened by
cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism have appeared in Western
Europe.
Because of their
awareness of the grave dangers of identity-based nationalism and the
concomitant popularity of the “clash of civilisation” thesis, many people who
oppose both phenomena focussed on initiatives such as “dialogues between
civilisations” as means of neutralising and preventing confrontation and
potential conflict. This view cannot be dismissed out-of-hand, and cultural
factors are undeniably important in promoting solidarity among peoples. But
they are certainly not the sole, nor even the strongest, ties that generate
convergence and solidarity. For example, public attitudes and perceptions
towards the war in Iraq have
been similar in Europe and in the Muslim world
and have been independent of the attitudes and motivations of leaders and
governments. Equally, the attitudes of Muslim and non-Muslim Europeans towards
the Arab-Israeli conflict, for instance, have been similar.
There is an alternative
to “tolerant coexistence” which involves recognising that, despite different
cultural and traditional heritages, every person is first and foremost a member
of a common human family and, as such, needs to enjoy the same basic rights.
This has been the fundamental conviction that allows democratic states and
regional communities such as the European Union to be created. In the words of
Jacques Derrida,[1] what is
at stake is a “feeling of hospitality” based not on recognition of “the other”,
when of a different origin, nationality, religion or “civilisation”, as being
intrinsically different, but on a recognition of “the other” as intrinsically
similar: in other words, as an equal. This distinction is not as trivial as it
may appear at first sight: let us not
forget the dangerous theory that exists about “levels of tolerance” as far as
social inclusion is concerned – in short the limit on the number of migrants
that any given host society can integrate. Such a theory stands as a useful
reminder of how crucial this distinction really is.
«Huntington» in Reverse
Many regarded the
polarising response of the US
administration to the events of 11th
September 2001 as part of the “clash of civilisations” for all
forms of terrorism were labelled as undifferentiated “threats to
national/international security” and amalgamated into a single entity. This was
achieved, also, through the artificial construction of non-existent links
between Al-Qaeda and the secular Iraqi dictatorship. As a result, Saddam became
a target in the “fight against terror” with the tragic consequences that are
now widely acknowledged. This is only one of the aspects of the “war on terror”
waged by George W. Bush, however: another, more perverse consequence has been
its view of “Islam” as a global problem. This has not been articulated in the
conservative sense proposed by Huntington[2],
who suggested that Islam is intrinsically incompatible with democracy and that
migrants and anti-Western multiculturalism constitute a threat to the identity
of the West. The Bush administration, however, has adopted the transformative
approach proposed by Bernard Lewis[3],
namely that Muslims are the “sick men” of the world and in urgent need of a
“grand project” that will cure them of their ills by injecting them –
forcefully if need be – with a large dose of democracy and modernity. This
approach is based on treating the issue of Islam as a religion as an
amalgamation of radical currents of political Islam with those advocating
religious purity. The idea of spreading democracy in the Greater Middle East
and the largely rhetorical initiatives conceived to promote that end are part
of the “grand project” to “democratise Islam”, as was the occupation of Iraq.
This is why the region targeted by the US
is the Greater Middle East stretching from Marrakech to Bangladesh. Yet the debate about
the Greater Middle East and Iraq
has once again demonstrated that democracy is, above all, a national issue and
depends first and foremost on internal factors. This is not to say that
international action is worthless – it was invaluable in Chile and Portugal, for instance – but that
it is only able to help by supporting internal developments. The target for
international assistance for democratisation should not be a “culture,” but
instead specific social and political forces. This makes a relationship between
equals possible, whereas making Islam the policy target establishes a new
bipolarity that identifies the West as the Christian world.
Inclusion and
Diversity
The Euro-Mediterranean
Partnership is essentially an attempt to widen the European Union’s area of
peace, democracy and prosperity to the South through integration. The parties
to the 1995 Barcelona Declaration reaffirmed their commitment to “develop the
rule of law and democracy in [their] political systems” and underlined the
importance of education on human rights and fundamental rights. The
extraordinary merit of the Declaration was its eschewal of civilisational bipolarity
and its affirmation of the possibility of integrating culturally diverse
countries in the same project as long as it achieved genuine convergence around
democratic values, as had happened in Europe.
The principles and aims of the Barcelona Declaration are as relevant today as
they were in 1995, only they are now on the regional agenda in a way that was
not the case a decade ago. Indeed, its aims and principles are at the heart of
the debate in all Mediterranean countries today, whether in Lebanon where there have been democratic
elections, in Egypt with its
difficult reform process, or in Morocco,
which is debating democratic transition.
When the EMP celebrated
its tenth anniversary, EuroMeSCo published a report examining the results
achieved by the Partnership. It sought
to ascertain whether it had met expectations, evaluating the acquis of the process in detail – both
the potential and real acquis – and
assessing the extent to which the original aims had produced tangible results.[4]
This was not an easy task if one considers that processes of inclusion are long,
drawn-out affairs and that long-term effects are more easily identified with
greater hindsight than that offered by ten years of experience. The key
conclusion is that the Barcelona Process did not contribute significantly to
promoting the necessary conditions to ensure Euro-Mediterranean inclusion. It
failed to do so because, despite the principles enunciated in the Declaration,
stability, the containment of political Islam and the constraint of migration
flows were prioritised. The EuroMeSCo Report concluded that it would be
necessary to review the links between development, security and democracy and
to abandon the erroneous view that has dominated during the past decade, that
development brings with it security and stability and perhaps even democracy in
the long run. The causal sequence linking economic reform to democratisation
did not work in the Mediterranean. In fact, some of the countries that underwent
greater economic growth were those that undertook the most modest political
reforms, and vice-versa. Meanwhile, political Islam in its various guises has
become an unavoidable reality. Thus, the European Union is now confronted with
the need to involve its Southern partners in a process that prioritises
political issues even as it develops an effective policy of economic inclusion.
In other words, the Union must now adopt a
holistic policy toward the region, based on the democratic principles of the
Barcelona Declaration. Democratic pluralism is a fundamental condition for
guaranteeing the success of a policy of inclusion within diversity. Putting
politics first means the acceptance of the great diversity of political actors
in the region – including “Islamists” – and their inclusion in a common
project. It also means accepting the autonomy of civil society. The need to
develop better mutual understanding and combat negative Western perceptions
about Islam should not serve as a pretext to ignore, in the name of cultural
relativism, the urgent need for political reforms and measures to protect human
rights. Inter-cultural dialogue is no substitute for pluralism, be it cultural
or political.
Europe’s
Responsibility
The success of the
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership depends largely on the degree to which the
European Union and its member states act consistently with the Union’s model of integration and its motto of unity within diversity. Any cultural or, what would be
worse, religious definition of Europe spells
self-inflicted defeat. One of the key merits of the European Constitution was
precisely the fact that it did not define the Union
in religious or cultural terms. Unfortunately, since that project failed there
have been calls for a re-opening of the debate about the identity of the Union. But if the Union
defines itself as a bloc with frontiers drawn along civilisational lines, its
model for integration will not survive. For this reason it is crucial for all
current and future citizens of the Union that
the merits of Turkey’s
membership bid should be assessed solely according to the criteria that, mutatis
mutandis, also applied to Portugal
or to Poland.
Turkey’s accession is
bound to have – is already having – an important impact on other southern
Mediterranean partners. Moroccan elites, for example, share the aspiration to a
“European destiny” seen as compatible with a parallel aspiration to deeper
integration within the Maghrib with large sections of the society. What is at
stake is a vast process of Southern inclusion into the “European space” that
may differ in form from country to country, but is, nonetheless, vastly ambitious.
Its success will ultimately depend as much on the ability of Southern countries
to succeed in the process of democratisation as on the ability of Europe to remain true to its values and affirm itself as
an espace monde. In other words, on Europe’s ability to practise open integration consistent with the principles of political
democracy, cultural and religious diversity, and freedom of citizen
participation. [5]
A crucial aspect of this
larger issue is the way in which the states of the Union
deal with the issue of migration and migrant communities. These communities
should be seen as central players, both in economic and in political terms, in
the process of Euro-Mediterranean inclusion. The revolt in the French banlieues, which some – mostly outside
France -- are keen to portray as a practical exercise in the “clash of
civilisations”, has demonstrated the urgent need for measures inspired by the spirit
of “hospitality”, designed to overcome discrimination and marginalisation, and to
encourage “newer” European citizens, including those of southern Mediterranean
origin, to become politically active.
In the run-up to the 10th
Anniversary Barcelona Summit in November 2005 the current relevance of the EMP
in the transformed international context, and the need to come up with answers
to the problems of a region that now dominates the global political agenda,
were hotly debated. The outcomes of the Summit show all the difficulties that lie
ahead for building a Community of Democratic States, arising not only from the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the definition of terrorism, but in particular from
the pace of reforms, the role of civil society and institutional ownership. The
agreed action plan constitutes an acceptable blueprint to move
Euro-Mediterranean inclusion forward. The
ability to implement it, however, will crucially depend on the ability to find
just solution to the very problems on which it was not possible to reach a
consensus during the Summit.