Interview with Massimo Toschi, Councillor
of the President of the Region of Tuscany for Peace, Cooperation and Human
RightsWhat could the utility of
creating a Mediterranean macroregion be today, and what are the difficulties
ahead in its implementation?
Now more than before, we find
ourselves in a phase of great political difficulty. In the past three years, the Union for the Mediterranean
has not started to act; quite the opposite, it has been de facto closed down,
and we now assist to a neo-nationalist withdrawal in the policies of the
European States, that find it very hard to read, precisely, Mediterranean policy.
And this is a political and cultural element that, today, has a lot of weight.
All the known proposals by Prodi,
for example (the Mediterranean Bank, the links between universities of the Northern and Southern
shores, with equal exchanges of students and teachers, the possibility of
creating proximity ties between the European Union and the Southern shore) have
not been put forward; not only, but, as I was mentioning, neo-nationalist
policies have re-emerged in many States, that do not care about the
Mediterranean at all.
As always, then, history amuses
itself, and suddenly the Mediterranean has changed its quality: let's think
about the story of Ben Ali, the story of Mubarak – actually, Mubarak more than
Ben Ali, because Tunisia is certainly an important country, but it is a country
that has 7 million inhabitants, compared to Egypt, which has 80 million
inhabitants, and also has a different political role, as it is the centre of a
balance.
The extraordinarly important Mediterranean transitory phase
Starting precisely from the
Mediterranean, from North Africa, a push, a drive, has started, a drive that,
beginning in Tunisia and involving Maghreb countries, although with different
forms, has arrived until the borders of Iran (because this is what Syria is),
surprising all of us. Who would have ever thought that Mubarak would have been
swept away in a week, and Ben Ali in an even shorter period of time? The West
thought that, despite the authoritarian nature of these regimes, a stable
authoritarian regime, with which one could interject, was still better than
supporting movements of a different nature. In reality, then, young Muslims
became non-violent – and this is another interesting element – and, without
denying their being Muslims, they started demanding freedom and democracy, and
they have, undoubtedly, changed history.
Today, we find ourselves dealing
with an absence of real policies, with the Mediterranean experiencing a transition phase of
extraordinary importance, and, within all this, with a war, because the war in
Libya is going on; the only thing that Europe has been able to do is a war,
rather than a policy, and, incidentally, with more modest results: in fact,
while in Tunisia Ben Ali was ousted, in Egypt Mubarak was ousted, and the
non-violent movement has spread, where the West has facilitated an opening to a
military initiative, it was a disaster, and we are now, essentially, stuck.
Then we can certainly say that, had we not intervened, Gheddafi would have
killed millions of people, however, as of today, we do not know what we'll be
able to do tomorrow.
The challenge to build a new
Mediterranean policy
This is the picture. Within this
framework, the responsibilities of the Mediterranean regions become, in some
ways, even greater, because we have realised that a Mediterranean policy will not
be bestowed on us, and it is as necessary as the European States are unprepared
to put it in place, especially in light of the failure of the Union for the Mediterranean.
And a Mediterranean policy needs
to be done in many ways, there is not just one keyboard: on the one hand, we
have the European Union keyboard, then there is the keyboard of the regions, of
the Mediterranean territories, not only of national governments. We must
therefore, a fortiori in this context, (which has enormous potential,
but is also a context of dramatic crisis) construct a strategy that allows even
States to find again a way of realising a Mediterranean policy.
Thus, a double responsibility
exists today: there is not only the responsibility of implementing a policy
established by the European Union, but also the responsibility of building, of
helping the European Union to rebuild a Mediterranean policy.
It is clear that the regions are
located in the States, and the States are part of the European Union, and the
macroregion, today, is one more challenge, namely the challenge to build, to
serve as a bridge for a new Mediterranean policy that also involves the
territory of the Southern shore. We cannot imagine a Western Mediterranean
macroregion without imagining an initiative involving the Southern shore, we
cannot think about these two things separately: firstly, because the sea
compels us to think of them in an integrated way, we can also build logistic
projects, or environmental projects (which are the common themes of a territory
as, for example, the Western Mediterranean is), but we cannot do this without
thinking about Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and therefore we must build a policy
that unites.
This is undoubtedly a difficulty,
because, in itself, the macroregion is not this, but we have to think about the
macroregion in new terms, and with new responsibilities, with nets not only
between the regions bordering the Western
Mediterranean: an effective policy which does not include the regions and the territories of the
Southern shore is, today, unthinkable.
All this obviously entails a set
of problems, because then there is the aspect of institutional balance, which is not easily tractable.
Tuscany, for example, is a region of Italy, which is an EU country: let's say
that Tuscany wants to create a macroregion with Liguria, Catalunya and PACA,
for example: evidently, you create an area where regional, national and EU laws
all apply, and in this framework you must add a new relationship with the
regions of the Southern coast, which have very different institutional settings
compared to ours (perhaps only Morocco has something that may look similar), certainly
in Tunisia the game is being played now, and the same goes for Egypt, because,
depending on the constitutional arrangement that Egypt will give itself, the
relationships will be more or less simple.
European
responsabilities
So, we have a responsibility even
in this game: the idea of participating in the electoral process, and in the
process of institutional reform, in Tunisia (and we have discussed this also
with the Italian ambassador in Tunisia) was born from this fact, because, if at
the end of the path a new centralised State comes out, this will weaken the
macroregion, and will weaken the framework of unity in the Mediterranean as
well. This is what is on the agenda: we can do it or not, we can be ready or
not, but, if we abandon the Southern shore, also our work (although in itself
the macroregion is an European macroregion, and not a macroregion including
these countries) will be affected from this, because depending on the
institutional outcomes of this process, the very possibility of building a
macroregion will become stronger or weaker.
The choice between war and
politics
How can the creation of a wider
culture of the Mediterranean be helped? What can the regions do about it?
The Regions can respond to
everything. If certain events occur, we can stand still, wait for the wave to pass,
and hope that after its passage something will remain. But the tsunami shows
that this policy does not work, because when the wave passes, it sweeps you
away as well. So at this moment, what we to do is resuming a leading role. Of
course the funds are scarce, and rarely things get done at no cost, it may also
be that right now there is even less money than yesterday, but truthfully, if
today the situation is this, it is because yesterday we did not think.
Now it is necessary to start from
policies, and it seems to me that Enrico Rossi, President of the Region of
Tuscany, is pushing in this direction, the very idea of the creation of the
Office for the Mediterranean is the idea that an issue exists, and it is
important to invest people and resources on this issue, because that is a
crucial matter.
But everyone has to do their
part: entrepreneurs should travel the world a little more, and also politics must
play their game. The macroregion is a political and cultural response of the
European regions, of part of the European Union, to an issue that concerns all
of the European Union, because, even from an economic perspective, if the oil
price increases, it increases in Lucca but it increases in Berlin as well; so
Chancellor Merkel may well think about the Baltic Sea region, but the
Mediterranean is more delicate than the Baltic, because in the Baltic there is
no war going on, and the Mediterranean is a very complicated setting.
Either you bomb, or you pursue
policies, tertium non datur, you cannot find a stand-by position (and
Libya is surely a parable on this, but not only Libya, because in the
Mediterranean, if we look at the situation from 1956 onwards, there have been
countless wars, and of course the epicentre is the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, but let's also think about Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq). There's
either war, or politics. I think there should be politics.
Martina
Selmi and Flavia Cori
