European realpolitik risks undermining democracy and respect for human rights abroad 

Europe takes pride in the export of rule of law and democracy,  but has done quite the opposite by supporting corrupt regimes with woeful human rights records, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds when it suits, argues Joël Ruet.

Dr Joël Ruet is an economist at CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research in France) and president of The Bridge Tank, a G20-affiliated think tank.

Europe’s strategic allies are more of a mixed cast than its leaders would care to admit. In service of their domestic and foreign policy objectives, European heads have often shown a troubling tendency to overlook the sanctity of democracy and the rule of law to court autocrats and overlook state-sponsored human rights abuses.

The EU’s controversial aid package to Egypt is a case in point. Since toppling the country’s first democratically-elected president in 2013, Egyptian president Fattah al-Sisi has plunged the country squarely back into authoritarianism, with levels of repression that rival those seen under deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak. Arrests and enforced disappearances of political activists are commonplace, while civil society groups in Egypt have lamented the government’s decade-long assault against independent human rights organisations.

Yet in March, the EU pledged €7.4 billion in funding to Sisi’s regime, intending to curb the flow of immigrants from Egypt by shoring up the domestic economy and funding a crackdown on illegal migration.

In the cynical calculus of European self-interest, Sisi’s flagrant human rights abuses appear to have fallen by the wayside, overruled by a desire to stem the flow of immigrants to the continent. Not only is this morally reprehensible but is also self-defeating: democratic backsliding and disregard for the rule of law in Egypt have disincentivised much-needed foreign investment, compounding Egypt’s economic turmoil and driving waves of migration to European shores.

The EU’s support for Sisi is not the only instance of the bloc allying itself with leaders spearheading a democratic decline. EU hopeful Serbia, under the rule of aspiring autocrat Aleksandar Vučić, has continued to receive billions of euros in pre-accession funding from the bloc despite a marked downturn in political rights in the country under his rule.

EU membership criteria stipulate respect for the rule of law and alignment with the bloc’s foreign policy objectives. Vučić’s alleged links to organised crime and sustained proximity to Russia contradict these criteria. Democracy in Serbia is being further undermined by the state’s capture of the media. Vučić, a former propaganda minister under Slobodan Milošević, through the state-owned telecoms company, Telekom Srbija, has taken near total control of the airwaves, spreading anti-EU and anti-NATO rhetoric and relaying  Russian propaganda, according to research by the Balkan Free Media Initiative.

European leaders’ wilful neglect of Serbia’s democratic deficiencies – which bear striking similarities to the authoritarian currents the EU finds so repulsive in Orbán’s Hungary – is, again, strategic. Western leaders have put their faith in Vučić to resolve the Kosovo issue and achieve the long-desired goal of Serbian recognition of the Albanian-majority state, acquiescing to Vučić’s self-portrayal as a guarantor of peace in the Western Balkans while tactfully ignoring his role in fomenting violent nationalism.

As with Egypt, migration control also plays a role: Serbia is an important node in people smuggling networks running from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe. EU officials have praised Serbian authorities for their role in policing Europe’s hinterlands. Realpolitik wins again, and the uncomfortable truth of Serbia’s democratic decline is swept under the rug by European leaders.

European leaders’ support for the democratically deficient extends well beyond the continent. Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan Region, a Kurdish enclave in the northern part of the country ruled by the dynastic Barzani family, is another theatre of Europe’s self-interested blindness. Like their US and UK partners, the French and German governments have forged strong allegiances with the Kurdish leadership, driven by a shared security interest in keeping Islamist groups at bay and building a bulwark against expanding Iranian influence in the region.

This military alliance has since transmuted into what one senior French official has called a “deep friendship”. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has managed to achieve near state-level relations with European powers, despite only representing a region within Iraq, positioning itself as a bastion of democracy and security in an otherwise illiberal region.

In truth, however, the region is far from the progressive beacon Kurdish officials proclaim it to be. Though nominally democratic, the KRG has been subject to the rule of the Barzani family since its official recognition in 2005. Masrour Barzani, the region’s prime minister and the latest installment in the clan’s long line of Kurdish rulers, has vowed to boycott elections due to be held in June.

Press freedom is in decline, while corruption and routine violations of the rule of law at the hands of the Barzani family have caused billions of euros in damages for foreign investors. Yet despite all this, the KRG remains a useful partner for European leaders in a region where Western allies are few and far between. Once again, a commitment to democracy and respect for human rights are treated as an afterthought, a bonus, rather than as essential criteria for European support.

Taken individually, each of these instances of European support for autocratic regimes may seem justifiable with reference to strategic objectives. Foreign policy is, after all, always a balancing act between values and interests. But this expedient approach risks undermining the wider Western democratic project, which sees democracy not as an optional extra but as a fundamental ‘good’ that should be strived towards both at home and abroad. As tensions with its authoritarian adversaries in Russia and China intensify, Europe needs to redouble its commitment to democracy, not forsake it.

Turning a blind eye is not a viable strategy in the long term. Hypocrisy of this kind opens cracks in the liberal order that threaten to destabilise it. For reasons both moral and strategic, Europe must do better.