 And thank you for inviting me, particularly, thank you for allowing me to select to choose a topic because there's a lot one can talk about at the moment. I thought about talking about the Irish presidency of OSCE. I thought of talking about various aspects of the EU crises we're looking at in the Euro and then the Schengen onwards. But I chose the Arab Spring and the implications for the European neighborhood policy because it is, in my opinion, the most significant development in the second decade of this century. And it ranks with the most significant development in the last decade of the last century. I refer to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the European Union. What happened here in 2010 is a totally new phenomenon, in my opinion. The former Soviet Union, the Soviet system collapsed internally, whereas what's happened in the Arab Spring, in the most striking thing about it, is the demonstration of people power. These popular uprisings are also very striking in that one they're not ideological. They have not been anti-US. They have not been surprisingly notably anti-Israel. And we have a very interesting development at King's College about three years ago. We started people, I think, all the Atkins Fellows. And these are 10 fellows from, we chose they're at doctoral level. We chose them every year. Ten from Arab countries and five from Israel. We make them work together in our rabbit war in the basement of the Strand Campus. We have them around the place all the time. During the Arab Spring, we had some great discussions, as you can imagine, because we had two very good Egyptian fellows. And what they used to tell us is, this is all about three things, they'd say, fundamentally. Freedom from oppression. They'd say bread, but by bread we meant a lot of things. It meant jobs, it meant the economy, it meant a whole lot of things. And the third big thing for them were the democratic values. Not saying which type of democracy, but the values of democracy. And I'm striking also that all this was brought about not just because of authoritarian regimes, not just because of youth unemployment and food prices and inflation and all the things we talk a lot about, but it was driven by a new phenomenon of the new social digital networks. Most popularly, we know them as Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of digital communication, which those of us who are more technologically minded, who are more technologically minded, will understand how this development is going at a pace. And it has fundamentally changed an awful lot that we have to discuss from now on about popular uprisings. Surprisingly also, the traditional political parties have played a very small role, hardly there at all. The other movements, like fundamentalist movements, were completely taken by surprise. Al Qaeda has not been involved, except as you might expect to some extent, some evidence of it in the Yemen, but that was to be expected. But it hasn't been a factor in the other uprisings. Egypt was an interesting case in point because it was not just the unemployed youth, it was the unemployed youth supported by the middle classes. But there is another new phenomenon which they all spoke about was the influence of Al Jazeera television, which has been a sort of keeping them in touch with what's going on elsewhere in the Arab uprisings. And this has been another new phenomenon. Now, I'm not going to analyse the uprisings, as I think it's a whole session in itself. And also, each country has their different characteristics. And you have Rosemary Hollis coming in Thursday week. And I only wish I could be here to listen to Rosemary because she'll give a very interesting analysis of what is going on. And no doubt, I'd love to hear her analysis of the mess we're in Libya. What I'll try to do is to give... talk about the European response to these developments. First of all, give an overall picture to talk about the implications for the European neighbourhood policy and to speculate a bit on possible outcomes. Rumsfeld's made a famous remark, he used a famous category once of known-knowns, known-unknowns, and unknown-unknowns. Now, this really applies to this situation. Somebody, a friend of mine, says it's the only remark he ever made in his career which contributed to promoting international peace. But that's really hard. But the first known-known is that nothing is going to be the same. And that another known-known, as if people power will for now on be a factor that we must politically take into account. A notable known-unknown is that nobody knows where this is going. And a big unknown-unknown is whatever, what new regional power structures are going to emerge from this. What types of leaders will emerge from this? You know, one can speculate when we come to write the obituary of the Arab Spring. Where will this democracy movement go? Where will it be? Will there be democracy-loving billionaires who've emerged in the Arab world as we found Soros in the experience of the 1990s and the impact that these democracy-loving billionaires had? Who will the leaders be? When we look at the history of revolutions we can't be very encouraging that things necessarily happen very quickly. Just think about 58 Hungary. Think about 68 Prague. Or more recently, think about 80, which we would say is Gadence. They all took many years to reach fruition. And the people who led these uprisings didn't achieve what they wanted to achieve right away, but certainly they were part of what ended happily in the end. I'd like to focus this talk particularly on the neighborhood policy. And the first remark I make about neighborhood policy is that the most successful neighborhood policy of the European Union was enlargement. And if you look at that success what would strike one, I think, is the soft power of the European Union and the basis of that soft power was a magnetism of the Union. And you can contrast this with the characteristic of America during the same period. And the American strength was the projection of hard power. A noudage that the soft power of the European Union was far more powerful and more effective. American hard power ain't what it used to be. I don't know that we're going, particularly after their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Congress will allow any administration to take the same route again. But European soft power is what we are looking at. And it has been an enormously successful phenomenon in the enlargement of the European Union. Since... I suppose I should make a relevant remark about also since we're talking about what made the process and what made this magnetism successful. There was an accepted doctrine that reform and democracy were linked with prosperity. This was accepted right across the board. And coming out of these debates with the Atkins Fellows, I can tell you, they now question really whether reforms and the type of democracy we have can lead to a sustained prosperity because they look to our recession, they look to certain... they don't have to come to Dublin to know that things are not exactly working out the way we thought they would. And so there's an added problem, I think, for the Southern neighborhood policy in that there is a doubt about whether this link between democracy and reform and prosperity is still so evident. I believe we can get around that, but I just mentioned that as a factor. It's a new factor as we see. But to mention the second aspect of the most successful was certainly enlargement. And the second was, let's call it, the Eastern neighborhood, which regrettably has been somewhat disappointing. But they will tell you, and I'll come back to this point later on, that a key problem has been the inability to offer membership perspective to these countries, to the six countries in the Eastern partnership, or what we now called the EAP. But the third aspect which we want to discuss here is the Southern partnership. And here there's a most unfortunate legacy because of our failure to pay attention to the nature of the regimes we were working with. And this now comes back to some extent to haunt us. The events in North Africa, therefore, have shifted the focus of the European Union to the Southern dimension. And we've had two very interesting communications from the Commission. In March we had the partnership for democracy and shared prosperity, which was an interesting document. But I recommend, and I'm no doubt on your working party, we'll be looking at what we call the review, which came out on the 25th of May. And this is, they called it a new response to a changing neighborhood. Now, it's all the usual things are there, building blocks for democracy institutions, rule of law, human rights, and civil society promotion and so forth. But there's a totally new emphasis on the next generation and a number of new elements. The most interesting for me is the creation of the European endowment for democracy. They said quite clearly, Cathy Ashton at the press conference said, this is based on the American model of the American endowment for democracy. And those of us who worked in the field know how effective the two wings of that have been the National Democratic Institute and the equivalent Republican Institute. And those of us who are working in countries like Georgia and Armenia and out there, the work that they did was far more effective, in my view, than a lot of our programs, because they were working to help create political parties. They were quite blunt about financing political parties that we would never have done. But they also were at very much at the cold face of we were working on things like constitution and all that, but they had much more freedom. The idea that Cathy Ashton explained is to have a much more aligned, much more like the American endowment for democracy. And this will be a new instrument. And it goes ahead with another new instrument called the Civil Society Facility. These are new elements. I will come back to talk about some detail a little bit later. But I noticed that the budgetary arrangements are perhaps as generous as you can expect what the commission is asking for. The current budget for the European neighborhood policy is 5.7 billion between now and the end of 2013. And they would add, propose to add a further 1.25 billion to this and an additional 1 billion to address urgent needs in the southern partnership. And the EIB is putting together 6 billion. And as you know, the EBRD now is enlarging and changing the mandate of the EBRD so the EBRD would also operate in the southern partnership. This is a swing of the pendulum in incremental development of European neighborhood policy. I'll be very brief about the history of where we are. What has happened up to now in the southern policy has not been up to expectations. I recall you bring back to your mind in 2008 when France proposed the setting up of the Union for the Mediterranean, the UFM. This was followed fairly quickly by the Polish-Swedish initiative of the eastern partnership. In fact, in terms of substance, what is being proposed now in these two documents that I refer to is a sort of a step back for the eastern partnership because most of what was there, not all, but most of it, has been on offer to the eastern partnership. Deep economic integration, free trade, mobility partnerships, come to that again later, but they didn't take to it. They didn't respond, except I'll come back to Moldova as perhaps one example. Perhaps I think with the Polish presidency coming in, this emphasis that we all talk about these days about the southern partnership, I think there will be a redress of that to some extent. The commission, everybody in Brussels certainly seemed to favour a single policy instrument and one can see the advantages of that. It makes the EU more visible. It harmonises what's on offer. Very importantly, and I can tell you for those working in the field, the action plans provide a sort of reform agenda and that was extremely important. It always felt to those who were working in this area. And the arguments there are still, I think, valid about trying to have a more or less single policy initiative. But with the emphasis now in the southern neighbourhood, is going to be on political reform, conditionality and what we call differentiation, so that each country will have very differentiated agreement and with a lot of flexibility if we see going through this excellent paper. By the way, the paper of the 25th of May is full of interesting ideas and I'm sure you probably will be very interested to see your analysis of it. Now, what are the problems and I suppose let's list a couple of the problems. The conditionality criteria here are not very well specified. I suppose it's very difficult to do so. But it speaks of suspension for those who fail to reform. And this is the thing which in our game we call positive and negative conditionality. And I noticed and if you'll allow me I will read from the paper of the Commission which says the EU will curtail relations with governments engaged in violations of human rights and democratic standards including by making use of targeted sanctions and other measures. Where it takes such measures it will not only uphold but further support civil society and at the same time apply a differentiated approach which will keep open the channels of dialogue with the governments, civil society and other stakeholders. This in my submission is a totally new departure in neighborhood policy. And I don't know how those who have to manage this thing are going to work positive and negative conditionality. It's to my mind it's a new concept and those in the field who are trying to apply this new concept I think will find it very, very difficult. That's a problem I would signal. Another aspect of the paper is that it doesn't deal with attitude towards Islamic parties. I suppose we all hope that the Arab League and so forth will move in a Turkish direction rather another direction but it doesn't seem to go with that. Another problem I think might be the notion which is through the whole paper of more for more. This is that you get more support. Those who reform more will get more financial support. This has, of course, is an interesting concept but it has its flaws. It could work I would suggest in Moldova where there's a willingness and a wish to reform and it would be a good incentive there but there would be no incentive at all to a country like Azerbaijan where they would just laugh. I think it was a joke because they're so rich and they wouldn't be interested. Then there's another aspect, the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority in my submission is already a full partner of the European neighbourhood policy and the funding of the authority will have to continue regardless of the democratic deficit there for purely political reasons. It's the more for more and the positive, negative conditionality. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how all that works and it's hard to see, I don't know if other practitioners in this room, it's hard to see how it's all going to work out but there again there's a political reality which we must refer to is that all the European neighbourhood states' reforms depend on the political will of the governments who are in power and the ruling elites in those countries and they will want above all to remain in power and it's persuading the political elites to move in this direction is going to be one of the great tasks. I want to refer to the disappointment in the European neighbourhood, the Eastern neighbourhood policy. These are the six countries who I don't have to name and all of them have shown a regression on governance, democracy, human rights except with the exception of Moldova in my opinion and in the Southern partnership if you apply something, not quite the same criteria only Morocco seems to have made major efforts towards reform. You can say, looking at the Eastern partnership that there's been progress, limited progress on economic reform but a total failure in democracy promotion. The French proposal for the Union for Mediterranean that tanked very early on but there were unusual circumstances as we all know there was the Israeli war on Gaza. There was difficulty including Israel in the whole operation very hard to hold back you remember ministerial meetings weren't possible it really got nowhere and became a vehicle for just bilateral national policies. Now I'd mentioned one other thing about the legacy that we're dealing with. The EU and I referred to it a little bit earlier on but the EU and the US legacy of which we have to live down and work around are our relations with the dictatorships we were supporting and it's probably easier for us to get around this than for the United States. Further remark, I want to get back to the other thing but further remark about the Eastern partnership it's very, everyone says you know if only they had a membership perspective they'd have, everything would have worked rather as it did with the enlargement. I have worked in some of those countries and frankly I don't think even with a membership perspective that it would have made any difference because they were not prepared to move in a reforming direction and it's not just we talk about Russia but they all had, they all regressed towards more authoritarian type regimes. Now a valid criticism I think of the Eastern partnership and see how it applies to the south is that finality was never very clear. You know to share everything with institutions was fairly vague and I think if what we're going to try to do now is to avoid the mistakes made in the Eastern partnership we need to clarify the end game. We want to avoid the obvious mistakes I consider one of the great mistakes in the early years of our relations with Russia was the personalizing of the relationship with Yeltsin because he was a spent force from a fairly early stage and I don't think that helped because we weren't able to condemn the corrupt privatizations that took place etc. So there's an awful lot to learn and those of us who've been in the field dealing with projects it was an awful lot to learn from the management of projects and when I was leaving Georgia I had an interesting session with Shabarnadze and I sat down and I listed all the projects the EU had done over five and a half years there were an enormous number and an enormous number of consultants had been employed at an enormous expense and I said to the President look here we are there's one or two here that have worked but all the others they're all dead what do you feel that he said oh well you know but it was a problem that we were lot to learn from our failures in eastern partnership and in our relations with these countries because we perhaps were much too optimistic that reforms would be sustainable and of course the corruption came and other elements came and disrupted that So I think to come back to the clarify the end game I think in the new arrangements the goal will have to be clear and it has to be in my opinion association it has to lead to a clear association and it has to be a structured relationship with these southern countries whether they be it in Middle East or North Africa and it has to be with a time frame and we have to try to get our heads around a very new and dramatic situation we have to fight for your EU coherence in regard to this the big problems I've referred to already are the targeting of this assistance and the difficulty of providing more money at a time of budget restrictions May I try to answer the question why is the southern partnership important? I would give two immediate responses one is that our security depends on our neighborhood and our southern neighborhood but also prosperity depends on our relations with southern I go so far as to say that their prosperity their economic success is our security I just take one figure out of the sky because it struck me immediately when I read this we're talking about 800 million people in the neighborhood the population of the Arab League at the moment is 280 million and the estimate is that within 15 years that will nearly double to over 500 million and an amazing article the other day that I read said that the recent opinion polls are showing that more than 50% well, first of all more than half this population is going to be under 25 in 15 years time but that 50% of the youth want to emigrate now if we fail to create economic growth in the southern neighborhood and have real development there there's actually an enormous potential to destabilize our own countries now we know all the debate that goes on about managed immigration and we're not really handling it very well I know it's become awfully political with right wing and xenophobic parties on the growth in a lot of countries not just the Netherlands and Finland and elsewhere but maybe way to the next vote in France but it's managed immigration is absolutely fundamental but we will not be able to manage it if we don't deal with the economic development of our southern neighborhood countries the watchwords as we said political reform but also economic development and we can't not afford to address the economies of the southern neighborhood one consoling and surprising figure as well is that the European Union disperses half of the world's development assistance this figure surprised me but now it's all a question of what priorities we use in that exercise and how we target it and whether we can use the mistakes of the past not to make them again a little bit of political weather forecasting before I close what can we expect in the political weather forecast well I suppose there are a few obvious things you can say a more democratic Middle East and a more democratic North Africa it's going to be more unpredictable it'll be more unstable democracy is noisy but it's more enjoyable we know it's more enjoyable but we'll have to live with whatever comes out of this and do our best to work with whatever comes out of it another reflection and I think in Washington in the beginning to realize this and recognize it U.S. influence is likely to be much declined not just in the Arab-Israeli peace process that's another lecture but in a whole lot of other things in regard to nuclear Iran but take an example of Egypt which is now of course in the grip of the expectations of the Arab streets and the success of people's power there's a strong anti-American feeling among these people and it runs very deep they haven't at all the same anti-Iranian feelings as they have as anti-American United States is likely to follow Europe and having a policy towards that part of the world which is more value-based and Harry Clinton has already indicated this in a number of interviews and this creates a new situation for America's relations with the number of its present allies important allies take for example Saudi the Saudi for good reasons are beginning to feel threatened by this and by the whole developments locally I was intrigued to see the elements of many closer contacts between Saudi and China and I can see as one possible consequence of this is that there will be a new alliance between Saudi and China Saudi would certainly build its further close relations with the Arab monarchies and then there's the question of Syria which is probably the most difficult and maybe the one that survives longer than a lot of the others because the Syria is in a very strange position because the western community has virtually no influence there and you know how difficult sanctions will be and all that but I was also intrigued to see that Iraq and Iran have reached agreement to have a military alliance this is I can understand this from a Shiite point of view but it's also a very fascinating prospect that the Iran trained military American trained military is going to provide a very good complement the Iraq sorry Iraq trained American military is going to provide a very distinct complement to Iran's military capacity it's a very new world and we had a various experience at King's College with Turkey because Turkey I suppose that I would submit to you is going to become the most important strategic regional power in that part of the world and when about a couple of months after the foreign minister Davutogu became foreign minister he came and gave us a keynote lecture he came to my institute at King's and it was very very fascinating because he set up a totally new agenda for Turkey and we know some of the basic things of course no problems with our neighbors but what was very interesting is that he can see people said he was trying to restore the Ottoman Empire but he can see that Turkey is in a key central position to influence developments in that part of the world and I think Turkey should be the main ally of the European Union in that area because they have tremendous power and they want to see a secular and democratic I qualify that a bit but they want to see free democratic systems of government in the neighboring countries and they're very interested in the prosperity of the neighboring countries and they are a big player because this European neighborhood policy in the south operates in a very complex strategic environment you have the interests of Russia to the north and you have still the interests of the United States in the region particularly to the south so it's important to consider as one of the most interesting players and now reinforced after the elections of course they are much more confident on where they're going and much less looking towards the European Union though it's still part of their policy to try to achieve membership but we I think need to build on the ideas of partnership with Turkey and it should have really then have everything in it but membership if we can move in that direction but it's more important to have a political strategic partnership with Turkey and all that that entails and one I'm not going to deal with is Libya because nobody knows what's going to happen there and it could have serious consequences for the alliance in the real sense is we my colleague called it a bag of clubs it's no longer article five doesn't work there anymore and NATO doesn't even take a similar position it didn't even take a similar position in the United Nations on Libya and frankly they say it's a bag of clubs you can find a club for Afghanistan, another club for Libya and I wouldn't like to be Rasmussen I think he has a very difficult job there and it's a challenge to the European Union I think the biggest danger and the biggest thing to avoid is a political vacuum put simply the problems of this other neighborhood are for Europe not for the United States it's closer to Europe we're more interdependent our interests are more immediate and we have different strategic interests so we have to assume the responsibility I think for our for the southern neighborhood policy we can't there's no one else who can do it and I always will remain an optimist I think we should all try to be an optimist about post Lisbon Brussels I know we all know the procedures are slow there's a lack of a sense of urgency and when we even see how these excellent proposals are going to be processed there is a lack of a sense of urgency and so far regrettably there's no sign so far that this political vacuum is going to be met and that the European Union can meet the challenge but I hope I'm wrong in that assessment we need to move on what the crisis is within Europe of the Euro and Schengen and what everyone talks about nowadays is the crisis in leadership well I suppose it is very true but we must face some ways of getting around this crisis of leadership and this crisis of solidarity as we see with the Euro but let's hope it's going to be different this week with Greece look, if Germany is no longer the motor of integration the future then must depend on finding other medium and small size states of Europe to take the place of the original motor for integration I think we all hope and everyone hopes that Germany will remain the motor for economic integration and on the economy but there are a lot of other areas where I think we can look to medium sized and small sized countries and what's interesting is Poland and that's the next presidency of the European Union we had some very interesting meetings in London with the Polish foreign minister Rafał Siorkowski who is a very extremely pro-European character with very very good ideas and I think the Polish presidency will be a very active and fascinating one and I think we're going to get a lot of leadership from the Polish presidency that's just coming up so let's not be pessimistic there are a lot of forces against the negative forces are very evident but I don't think we should indulge in pessimism Lisbon was structured so that we could build a bigger boat a bigger and better boat more fit for purpose and look, if Lisbon is as good as it gets we just have to work with it we have to work harder with it we have no other choice and an awful lot depends I think on number of factors but there's the external action service David O'Sullivan spoke to you last January and he gave a very interesting outline the challenges facing him I have to say in this audience here one must admire the likes of David O'Sullivan and Catherine and others who have really made such a big impact in the European Commission in particular and others in other institutions and I admire David's courage in taking on this task but pretty simply it just has to succeed there's no alternative, it has to succeed I remind you that the three great challenges he said in his speech was one was neighborhood the next challenge is the Middle East peace process or Middle East peace and the third was to project European interests in the new global order of the new global world the new global order of economic and political giants is to project Europe in that world and European interests in that world of the United States, of China and of India there's an enormous task there but I want to sum up the European Union has a stark choice in its neighborhood it's either to be in the vanguard of change or again be behind the curve and on the wrong side of history I think the events in North Africa particularly have demonstrated this challenge and it's the challenge to develop a clear strategy it must rise to the the EU must rise to this it's a historical challenge by any proportions it must rise to the challenge of its neighborhood as I said we have to avoid the mistakes of the past and we have to give a priority to the political and financial political and financial priorities which are required to build a safe and prosperous southern neighborhood and I think it would be a great disaster for all of our countries if we fail to do so but the challenge is quite enormous and I'll stop there and look forward to the discussion