Let's have an Arab commissioner

The college of commissioners has a collective talent; compare them, to say a board of an international company and, to put it bluntly, whatever other merits they may have, there is if nothing else a superior distribution of expertise in relatively obscure languages; a democratic spread, all bases covered. Bar one: Arabic, a language spoken by more Europeans than the populations of seven of the ten new member states.
In post-enlargement Europe, there is therefore a glaring gap of representation and
understanding here. The Estonians (1.5m), Maltese (0.4m) and Slovenians (2.3M) - or, to take a larger example, Finland (5m) all have their spokesmen at the top table in touch with domestic opinion and insinuate their particular national perspective:
They explain why the Maltese want a reference to God in the constitution; why the Swedes have an aversion to alcohol and a fondness for the oral, flavoured tobacco that isn't-quite-snuff.
And so on.
The 6m European Arabic-speakers - whose satellite channels ironically provide the only continent-spanning common media space- do not.
Big issue, a taboo issue.
And of course bound up with the Muslims in Europe question. (There are 18m, more numerous than the Dutch.)
The issue goes beyond that of democratic representation to pragmatism, since many of the problems Europe faces today require understanding of the Arab world, within Europe as well as beyond.
The truth is, the EU is still living in the past, because of the impact of the enlargement countries and their obsession with history. .At some point you’ve got to stop hearing the words “Yalta” and “Munich” emerging from the European parliament’s east European members and engage with the 21st century.
It’s also excessive to have yet another tranche of east European commissioners.
Here is why.
Tens of thousands of Africans have crossed into the Canary islands this
year, twice as many as last year, and hundreds more have died
trying.
Obviously better relations with Morocco and Algeria are a priority. A meeting this summer in
Barcelona was regarded a success, but the question is whether the planned
razor wire and sea patrols would work; the proposed development aid to Africans to
encourage them to stay at home is far less than the remittances they send back; so the Africans will keep on coming.
More and better dialogue is required with the Maghreb countries.
A second issue. The "sharpest end" of the immigration problem is the growth in numbers and violence of young Muslims in Europe's big cities. I know this might be a difficult thing to ask of the people ensconced in the EU institutions, but if you leave this psychologically hermetic world and move in the real Brussels environment, you will realise there is a lot fear and anger towards young North Africans, not all of it unjustified.
What about having a commissioner in touch with North Africans’ urban problems in the cities of the EU?
A third issue: freedom of speech. The EU was at sea when faced with the challenge to freedom of speech posed by the hostility towards the Mohammed cartoons. The commission could so with someone who speaks Arabic, knows what the satellite channels are saying and has read the Koran.
It is probably too late to deprive the Bulgarians and Romanians of their commissioner, but why not set up an extra post? Twenty-eight is not so different from 27. An Arabic speaking commissioner with the portfolio of relations with the Maghreb, urban lack of integration and with a joint communications-media responsibility, along with Margot Wallstrom, with a special remit for the Arab world? One possible candidate: Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French council of Muslims. . It could be that he is too French, but there must be others of his ilk, elsewhere.