BRUSSELS: The European Union's foreign policy chief is seeking at least €2.5 billion ($3.38 billion) of extra funding to help support reforms in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in North Africa. In an article published in the Financial Times, Catherine Ashton said she was in discussions with the European Investment Bank, the European Union's financing arm, to mobilize €1 billion for Tunisia this year. That would represent a doubling of the EIB's average annual lending for projects in the country, whose president was driven out by a popular revolt a month ago. Ashton said she would also ask EU member states and the European Parliament for an extra €1 billion of EIB lending for the EU's neighbors in North Africa and the Middle East, including Egypt, to support democratic reform. That would be on top of €8.7 billion the EIB has earmarked for nine countries and territories — Algeria, Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia — for the 2007-13 period. Ashton suggested the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development could also provide at least €1 billion annually to "underpin transition in Egypt, for example." Such a move by the EBRD, which is not an EU institution, would require the agreement of all its shareholders, not all of whom are members of the 27-country European Union. On Monday, Ashton said the EU aimed to conclude negotiations on a new trade deal with Tunisia, giving a boost to the Tunisian economy battered by the turmoil of the past weeks. Ashton said the "people power" movements in Tunisia and Egypt had a special resonance in Europe given its own history. "Our history also tells us that the victory of people power is just the beginning. It takes time, money and care to build the foundations of a deep democracy," she wrote. The EU has been scrambling to reevaluate its policies in response to the unrest that has swept across North Africa and brought down authoritarian governments in Tunisia and Egypt that Europe and the United States had supported. While the European Union has expressed support for democratic change in the region, the unrest has raised concerns about Islamist radicalization and the possibility of new waves of unwanted migrants seeking to reach Europe.
