“Micro European” is now interested in relations between the European Union and the Mediterranean, with the Algerian writer and philosopher Boualem Sansal.
A Mediterranean focus today in European microphonewith Boualem Sansal, French-speaking Algerian writer and philosopher, Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the French Academy in 2013, Édouard-Glissant Prize for all of his work in 2007, Mediterranean Prize in 2021. The Mediterranean crystallizes today many questions of international geopolitics today.
franceinfo: Do you feel that you belong to both sides of the Mediterranean?
Boualem Sansal : Absolutely, really, I feel with one foot in Algeria, and one in France, without feeling torn. Basically, the Mediterranean is more of a hyphen than a gap.
Precisely, we realize that this Mediterranean crystallizes many questions of international geopolitics. And these questions, afterwards, are found in Europe, whether we like it or not. For you, has Europe, therefore the European Union, missed something or not, in the Mediterranean?
I can say that for a number of years, Europe has been virtually absent. No one manages to stop the thing, and to rebuild what the Mediterranean is. The Mediterranean is a center of gravity.
We have Mediterranean countries in Europe, you could even say, Portugal and Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, and I have the impression that Europe does not rely on these Mediterranean countries to have a Mediterranean policy with the other shore?
Europe has become technocratic. What is symbolic escapes him. The esotericism of things escapes him.
You made the headlines Review of the two worlds in March, in the interview Islam and Islamism, you make this European non-position understood. In reality, it is a somewhat blind position, of the influence that the Mediterranean really reveals, starting with Turkey, since Mr. Erdogan has a real geopolitical influence?
Ah, sure, Turkey has a history, and it sticks to its history. They are fully engaged in this policy of reclaiming, and beyond that, of appropriating the Mediterranean, of making the link between the North and the South. But basically are they wrong, when we see that Islamization is advancing in Europe?
While Europe participated, there was the war in Iraq, Libya, Syria. Syria now has Russian bases. We see these countries which are dismantled, which are unbalanced in the Mediterranean, which have a real influence, and once again we see that Europe is not really present?
The countries you cite, Iraq, Syria, Libya are a creation of the Sykes-Picot agreements. It’s quite artificial. We mixed things that weren’t mixable, they destroy themselves. They were built on inconsistent foundations. Lebanon, etc… that’s why earlier, we were talking about the Union for the Mediterranean project, it was wonderful. It was the aftermath of the Sykes-Picot agreements. The opportunity, it was there, to rebuild on the symbolic level, to build bridges even.
Except that today, the reality, for years moreover, is that behind all that, there are peoples. And that with the issue of migrants, Europe finds itself facing a reality it had ignored?
It’s a reality.
Who come from the Mediterranean…
We are creating the conflicts of tomorrow. And apparently, this Europe, it no longer knows how to look at what is its belly, the Mediterranean, its belly. Our duty, if it is to militate, yes. I campaigned very seriously on a certain number of themes that seemed really serious to me, first of all the Francophonie… because we need a link, we need links and identify them and work on them, in order to rebuild.
Institutionally, we need institutions. The Mediterranean cannot be like that. We need institutions that look on in a sustainable and calm way, hence the Union for the Mediterranean. Before that, there was the Barcelona process, it was not bad. At least there was that. In a number of areas, we can cooperate, create a dynamic, habits of meeting and talking to each other. We abandoned that. So the Francophonie and building institutions.
And then thirdly, we must also address the problem of the future. What is the future? First the pollution, the Mediterranean, we are in the process of physically destroying it, it’s a dead lake, it’s very clear and above all, all these poor people who are really dying, it’s a cemetery.
The two deaths of the Mediterranean?
It has literally become a cemetery for men. So to bring life back to the Mediterranean, the major structuring project is to depollute this sea. And then this question which poses serious problems and deaths is freedom of movement.
And when we talk about energy, it is of course solar energy, also the scarcity of water?
This question becomes very worrying, who takes care of it? So it is time for the North shore and the South shore to talk to each other absolutely. But ohI don’t know who to contact…