Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice … “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Goodbye, feet!” (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). “Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I’m sure I shan’t be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can …”
I remembered these words in Alice in Wonderland last August when I spent three days in the Campania region in Italy. People in business, unions, politics and civil society explained to me that this region is one of the poorest in Italy and in the European Union. Half of the population are at risk of poverty. Around 18 per cent are unemployed.
In the recent general election campaign, no party, right, left or centre – except Movimento 5 Stelle – had put southern Italy’s poverty and underdevelopment on the agenda. I was told that the top leadership of all the major parties in Italy – except Movimento 5 Stelle – come from the north. They use their power to make northern Italy richer and allow southern Italy, including Sardegna and Sicily, to fall behind.
No wonder many voters in Italy’s south feel detached from a politics that does not address their needs. The lowest voter turnout in the Italian September general elections was in the south and the Movimento 5 Stelle emerged as the top party in the south. But on its own, and in opposition, it is too weak to push the south higher up in Italy’s political agenda.
Can this explain why not only Italy’s political leadership but also that of the European Union give scant attention to the Mediterranean and Africa, with their head in the prosperous north and the poor legs far away in the south? Since the EU’s enlargement to the east, most of its agenda has been taken up by issues of its Eastern neighbourhood. Its new focus on the Indo-Pacific will stretch the EU away from the Mediterranean and Africa even further.
Southern Europe continues to be poorer than northern Europe. If the political leadership in the capitals of EU member states largely ignore the predicament of their southern regions, how can they take seriously other regions, even further south, in the Mediterranean and Africa?
We are 27 member states in the EU. Nine of us are considered to be Mediterranean countries. But is that really so? Of the 27, only Malta and Cyprus are surrounded totally by the Mediterranean Sea. Only Malta, Greece and Cyprus have 80 per cent of their population living on the coast of the Mediterranean. Seventy per cent of Italians, 40 per cent of Croatians and Spanish, 20 per cent of French citizens live on the Mediterranean coast.
Since the EU’s enlargement to the East, most of its agenda has been taken up by issues of its Eastern neighbourhood- Evarist Bartolo
With this kind of geographical, demographic and economic reality where the epicentre of the EU is “far away” from the Mediterranean, no wonder it is a big struggle to put the Mediterranean and Africa on the EU’s agenda in a meaningful and consistent manner. European Commission presidents like Romano Prodi and Jean-Claude Juncker tried to reset the relations between the two continents but they were disappointed with the very little progress achieved.
Just before leaving office in Brussels, Prodi admitted that he had problems persuading his colleagues that the EU should support the birth and development of the African Union. He had called for a new type of relationship that would not be the continuation of colonialism by other means:
“Charity is a traditional reflex of Europeans but what is needed today is to establish a genuinely equal partnership between Africa and Europe. Investing in Africa, creating jobs in Africa, that should be the mantra for our action, not viewing Africa solely in terms of the refugee crisis. To view our relations with Africa only in terms of refugees is disrespectful to Africans. But let us do what has to be done on the ground to avoid unfortunate people taking to the seas,” he had said.
Four years ago in Vienna, Juncker warned that “Africa’s future will shape Europe’s destiny”. He acknowledged that Europe was too late in discovering business investment opportunities in Africa and urged European firms to boost their investments in Africa in a “partnership among equals”, reminding the joint European Union and Africa Union forum that Africa’s population was forecast to double to 2.5 billion by 2050.
The climate emergency is making the situation worse as desertification spreads and millions are displaced as they have to abandon their agricultural lands. While the population continues to increase, there is less land to provide them with food.
Even with the new steps that European governments took to replace Russian gas and oil with supplies from Africa, the structural relationship remains the same with the EU importing primary products and keeping manufactured goods away. How will African countries create the millions of jobs needed for their youth if they remain only exporters of primary products?
Although the EU is Africa’s largest trade and investment partner, our political presence is very weak. At the EU-AU ministerial meeting in Kigali last year, African foreign ministers turned up in full force but only a minority of EU foreign ministers bothered to attend. The political message of the absences was very clear.
A strategic drive by the EU to nearshore business operations in Africa and relocate them from Asia would go some way to addressing the unequal relations between the two continents. The EU is being shortsighted in largely neglecting the Mediterranean and Africa. The future of the Mediterranean and African countries risks not only being shaped without the EU but against the EU.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.