EU promises more money to bolster democracy

Funding

The European Commission is seeking €1.2 billion for the European neighbourhood policy (ENP) for 2011-13 in addition to €5.7bn that has already been committed for the same period. It has announced that it will propose amendments to the draft 2012 budget to the member states in the coming weeks. The additional money is to be mobilised primarily through re-allocations, according to the Commission.

The member states have already been asked to approve €1bn in additional lending to the southern Mediterranean by the European Investment Bank, bringing the EIB's total lending capacity there close to €6bn in 2011-13.

Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for enlargement and neighbourhood policy, has said that the current split between east and south – with two-thirds of ENP funding going to the south and one-third to the east – would not be changed in the coming years, but that the ENP would be far more flexible in responding to developments on the ground.

Migration

The new neighbourhood policy foresees ‘mobility partnerships' with the countries of the region, in line with proposals made earlier this month by Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs. The EU promises increased financial and technical assistance and an easing of visa requirements in exchange for promises by partners to crack down on illegal migration – a demand that has become more acute following the inflow of tens of thousands of people from Tunisia and Libya since February.

However, diplomats said that the mood among the member states was not in favour of any significant moves on visa requirements. Existing facilitation measures, for example with Ukraine, are not working properly, they said, as individual EU member states impose additional requirements on visa applicants.

The lifting of visa requirements in 2009 and 2010 for all countries of the western Balkans except Kosovo has led to a spike in frivolous asylum applications, especially from Serbia and Macedonia. In response, the European Commissions on Tuesday (24 May) proposed a safeguard clause that would allow the temporary reintroduction of visa requirements in case of massive inflows.

Democratisation

In its strategy paper for Libya for 2011-13, most of which was drafted in 2009, the European Commission stressed that “important issues” had “deliberately” been left out of the strategy, and named “those directly related to governance, human rights, education or the environment”. This was supposed to make participation in the neighbourhood policy more appealing to Libya. The bid got nowhere; then, earlier this year, Libya's people attempted to overthrow the government, which the Commission's paper described as a “form of direct democracy under which power is entrusted to the people through their participation in local basic popular congresses”.

This is the old way of doing business, according to officials. The new way makes democratic reform a precondition for assistance, although the specifics are left vague.

The most tangible innovation is a European Endowment for Democracy, to support political parties, trade unions and civic groups. This is a significant departure for the EU, which until now, and unlike the United States, has not funded partisan groups. This could, in the medium term, greatly enhance the EU's reach in the new democracies.