THE ARAB WORLD

Autumn 2009

by Jim Sillars

Driven by public opinion and NGO pressure, EU negotiators have tried to impose a democracy and human rights clause on the oil-rich Gulf region. Jim Sillars explains why this has been both unwise and futile, and offers a way out of the impasse

Let me start with a truth; individuals can be altruistic but states never are. State interests always matter and that is the realpolitik behind the EU-GCC stalemate on a Free Trade Agreement. The EU policy of inserting a ‘democracy and human rights’ clause has been rejected by the Arabs in defence of their own states’ interests. After years of cooperation stretching back to 1988, is this impasse and all that has gone before it a cause of shame or pride for the EU? The answer is neither for the real question is whether the EU has been wise or foolish?

The EU has long had international political ambitions over and above trade. It has a political agenda to create democracy and embed human rights in the states with which it engages. It employs its trading superpower status to further its political agenda. Whether that is sensible is debateable, and its attempt to impose that agenda on the Arab Gulf states is where the question of wisdom comes in.

The EU is a democracy, so in each of its member states there are civic and political institutions which allow for freedom of speech and freedom of voting, with governments drawing their legitimacy from the consent of the people, independent judiciaries and the rule of law. The EU also seeks to impose on what it regards as the less fortunate its view that human rights are “universal, indivisible and inter-related” (Art. 9.2 of its agreement with the ACP states).

Democratic institutions are subject to opinions and pressures in the making of policy, and the EU like all Western polities is the legitimate target of special interest groups and NGOs. These groups are by their nature subject to idealistic tunnel vision, but however laudable their objectives and motives they carry no responsibility for the end product, and consequences, of the policies they urge on Western governments. NGOs partnered with members of the European Parliament and national policymakers too in creating the human rights clause whose wording seeks to impose EU standards on external partners.

Human rights groups are already on record in demanding that the EU should insist on “freedom of the press, women’s rights and labour rights of migrant workers” in any FTA with the GCC. Those countries that rely heavily on EU aid or trade, as is the case with the Arab Mediterranean states that signed up to the Barcelona Accords, had no choice other than to accept that kind of diktat. But the GCC is in a different league.

Looked at from the GCC’s position, the clause is a projection of EU ‘soft power’ – but power nevertheless – into the GCC states’ sovereign areas. It enables the EU to exercise a monitoring, and punishing, role in how these states conduct their domestic policies. The EU claims the clause is sculpted in each separate case to take account of a third party’s particular circumstances. There is, however, a common point of rigidity: if the EU thinks its external partner has breached a code of human rights, as interpreted by the EU, then the EU has the ultimate sanction of suspending the agreement. It should come as no surprise that the GCC has collectively rejected such an imposition.

What the EU and those who mould its policies have not yet come to terms with is the profound change in world economics, and the power that flows from that. For over 400 years the world has been dominated by the Atlantic axis, and now that era is over. The new paradigm is Asian-Pacific power. Europe’s power is in relative decline, and its ability to tell the world how to run its affairs is not universal. Yet where aid and trade is vital to a developing country, as with the Arab Mediterranean region, the Afro-Caribbean states and certain African countries, the EU can still intrude upon their sovereignty.

The GCC’s circumstances and relations with the EU are very different from the above. Once controlled by imperial Britain, they were never colonies and so kept intact their Arab and Islamic integrity, and pride. These are strong factors in their own view of themselves. And even though they have significant volumes of trade with the EU, they do not need aid funds. A free trade agreement with the EU would be beneficial to the GCC states, but it is not essential to their development. In the continued absence of an FTA, even if Europe were to be unfair in its trading arrangements the GCC states have recourse to the remedies of the WTO. If the EU does not want an FTA on Gulf terms, there are other regions of the world with powerful economies that the GCC can deal with where no violation of sovereignty is threatened.

A major factor in the Gulf states’ rejection of any Western power having the right to monitor, upbraid them or suspend an agreement unilaterally is the delicate religious balances in the region. The EU, its NGOs and other supporters of the absolute insistence on the clause, seem ignorant of the internal pressures to which GCC governments are subject. Has it escaped their notice that we are in a period of resurgent Islam, with al-Qaeda and also the Salafi movement (more radical than Wahhabi) hurling accusations about putting the land of Islam under Western domination, and being listened to in what are still very conservative societies?

In the situation they now face, no Gulf state’s ruling group can be seen to open the door to any executive interference by the West in its sovereign domestic affairs. An EU claim to monitor and suspend an agreement as punishment for not acting as the EU would wish, is anathema because it would be explosive, leaving those in charge open to accusations of betrayal of Islam and its values.

So is it wise for the EU to seek to lever the GCC states into that position, where the stability they maintain with their delicate balancing acts between modernising and conservative forces could be put at serious risk? Is it sensible for an EU facing considerable economic problems of its own, especially in manufactured exports and financial services, to refrain from widening business opportunities in a fast developing region because of a clause it cannot impose? On both counts, I think not.

There is a certain arrogance in attempts to lay Western ideas of democracy and human rights like a blanket on the developing world, where tribal and clan loyalties are still relevant, civic society has still fully to flower and where religious beliefs and traditions often hold contrary values. Without question, and irrespective of these differences, the need to assert rights for humanity to be free from abuse brings matters of high moral value to bear on relationships between states.

But this can be counter-productive if a state-to-state dialogue on human rights is converted into an attempt to instruct an economic partner state to comply with rules laid down by another state. And if the result is, – as would be the case in the Gulf states – the strengthening of the most conservative forces by providing them with the cause of protecting Islamic values, then it is not a sensible course to take. Those in charge in the Gulf have enough problems in dealing with theological attacks from al-Qaeda and Salafis without allowing the EU to give them more.

European Commission officials probably know this, but they have to get an FTA passed by the European Parliament that is subject to pressure by human rights groups, especially those adamant in their aim of improving the status of women in the Gulf. But perhaps the European Parliament elections offer some hope; the right-wing has been strengthened and is more likely to give trade opportunities a higher priority than the imposition clause provided a way can be found to avoid its objectionable claim to override the GCC states’ sovereignty. The need is to find an FTA formula that satisfies the EU that human rights are on the agenda in future dialogue within the agreement, but with no imposition of the EU’s views enshrined in it.

Perhaps the Australian-New Zealand formula of 1997 is worth another look, for both rejected an EU agreement. The then Australian ambassador to the EU explained that “the existence of operative human rights and non-fulfilment provisions as proposed by the Community remains in Australia’s view inappropriate in an agreement on trade and co-operation.” His government firmly opposed an agreement that could be suspended or terminated “unilaterally on the basis of undefined criteria.”

The EU-Australia-New Zealand compromise was to put human rights in the broad preamble of their agreement, without any ability on the part of the EU in the close text, to impose its view, and apply sanctions. That might work with the GCC, and certainly the EU should try it. That would be wise.