Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

14 | R
OBERT 
S
PRINGBORG
 
crisis will exacerbate this trend, especially in that the Middle East oil 
economy will be hard hit by the downturn in oil revenues. The growing 
gaps within states and between states and societies cannot go unfilled 
forever. Leadership successions are particularly critical moments in that 
they expose these gaps and invite political actors to fill them. The 
calculations of what we have referred to as veteran or old guard, MB-style 
Islamists are most probably based on exactly this reading of the situation 
and ultimately those calculations could prove to be correct.  
In sum, the real challenge may not be the rise to power of radical 
Islamists or violence committed by them, but the perpetuation and even 
strengthening of authoritarian rule as a result of moderate Islamists 
becoming strategic partners of at least some elements of incumbent 
regimes. Authoritarianism is bad enough, but an Islamist authoritarianism 
would be even worse, for the countries themselves as well as their 
neighbours and indeed for much of the rest of the world. Thus, an EU 
strategy predicated on the continuation and acceptance of the status quo is 
flawed by the real possibility that the status quo is not sustainable and that 
the likely outcome of its change is yet more negative, in that non-
democratic elements would be further entrenched, to say nothing of their 
possible anti-Western agenda. What then, might the EU do in the face of 
this potential threat, as well as the more commonly considered one of 
Islamist radicalisation owing to political frustration?  
The present EU approach 
It is easier to say what the EU has not done to confront Arab 
authoritarianism and the potential threats of re-radicalised Islamism or an 
Islamist–authoritarian incumbent alliance, than it is to identify a coherent 
strategy and associated actions. It joined the US in effectively rejecting the 
outcomes of elections in Egypt and Palestine in 2005–06 by failing to stand 
against governmental intimidation of the MB in the former and by tacitly 
supporting the disastrous American-backed initiative to enable Fatah to 
conquer Hamas in Gaza militarily. It continues to be party to the isolation 
of Hamas and the effort to buy support for Fatah in the West Bank. 
Throughout the Arab world, it has chosen to work with authoritarian 
governments and to offer assistance without democratisation or even 
liberalisation preconditions. Condemnation by the European Parliament of 
human rights abuses in Egypt are simply so many words, as the European 
Commission’s approach to the country remains unaffected by the officially 
expressed sentiments of its nominal legislative authority. An effort to reach 

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RADICALISATION
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out to young, democratic Islamists has not been mounted. Those 
approaches that have been made to Islamists are primarily through their 
elected members of parliament, which necessarily limits the range of non-
violent Islamists with which it interacts.  
This brief overview of timid EU actions towards the Middle East and 
North Africa (MENA) suggests that it has no overt, self-conscious strategy 
to directly facilitate democratisation there, either with or without the 
assistance of Islamists. Clearly, it does not see itself as a possible midwife of 
a transition based on a possible pact between reformers in government and 
moderate oppositionists, crucial in the latter camp of which would 
necessarily have to be Islamists. There is no sign that the EU is even aware 
of this potential path away from entrenched authoritarianism, which may 
actually be the best hope for peaceful, moderate democratisation in the 
region.  
Why then has the EU failed to be more proactive, to utilise its 
substantial material and diplomatic resources to counter authoritarianism 
and to reward Islamists for pursuing peaceful political change through 
democratic means? Certainly, there are historical and structural reasons. 
Suspicion of Islam, to say nothing of Islamism, is deeply engrained in 
European publics and has been further heightened by Islamist violence, 
and at least in some European communities, by the presence of immigrant 
Muslims. For politicians, let alone bureaucrats, to ignore this sentiment is to 
court a threatening backlash. But even without the complicating factor of 
suspicion or outright anti-Muslim sentiment, the fundamental EU way of 
doing business is state to state. The negotiations on joining the EU and even 
those conducted with ‘new neighbours’ are held between the EU and the 
governments of the respective countries. EU foreign assistance is virtually 
entirely delivered to governments or to apolitical cultural organisations. As 
regards the MENA, the primary difficulty confronted by the EU since the 
Barcelona process began in 1995 has been to reconcile Arab states’ 
hostilities towards Israel and EU policies deemed to be supportive of it. The 
excessive state-centred formalism of EU relations with the MENA, which 
also results from the quasi-sovereign nature of the EU itself (a factor that 
limits its flexibility and heightens its sensitivities towards issues of 
sovereignty), renders interactions with non-state political actors 
problematic. That the most powerful of these non-state actors today are 
Islamists simply exacerbates the problem. 
Regrettably, the obstacles to a more flexible, non-state-centric EU 
approach to the MENA do not end there. A more subtle, nuanced 

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