European stakes in Bangladeshi thresholds

Very much like the United States, the 2013-4 EU (European Union) concern about our democracy translated into a drive to reform our institutions, but unlike the United States, no GSP (general system of preferences)-type wrinkle dangled like a Damoclean sword over our trade privileges. Why the Bangladesh-EU interlock is predicated to smoothen rough bilateral edges better than the Bangladesh-U.S. counterpart does can be reduced to three features: (a) EU expectations mirror international/multilateral expectations more than self-seeking goals; (b) EU directs abstract principles to specific grassroots cases, thereby shifting beyond the government to civil society, as opposed to the U.S. tendency to inter-link the government even if the vehicle is a social group; and (c) the absence of a power-context opens more tangible developmental inroads that a power reputation obfuscates.
Though a belated hands-on partner than the United States, the 2001 EU Cooperation Agreement opened three flanks of attention and support: social sustainability, trade expansion through diversification, and balancing socio-economic growth with environmental safeguards. Fortunately for Bangladesh, its microfinance innovation from the 1970s under Grameen Bank's Dr. Muhammed Yunus, and the unfolding engagements of globally-reputed non-governmental actors, like the Association for Social Advancement (ASA, another microfinance player), and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), another global award-winning enterprise under the equally celebrated Sir Fazle Hasan Abed), supplied plenty of societal openings to make substantial multilateral differences. The more recent joint-visit of the French and German foreign ministers (FMs), Laurent Fabius and Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, itself another diplomatic innovation, recognised Sheikh Hasina's leadership role on the environmental front precisely on the eve of France  hosting a major conference (at the end of the year, and where Bangladesh's contributions can be expected). Though the FMs' plan to travel to the Patuakhali grassroots for first-hand climate change observations did not materialise, too many European groups silently working on this (environmental) front can assert how the fundamentals have been falling into place for quite some time.
Just as Moving Coastlines: Emergence and Use of Land in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Estuary, edited by Koen de Wilde, for example, chronicles enormous water-front reclamations already underway, The Netherlands and the International Labour Organisation funded a 5-year, $5.4-million project promoting "workplace rights and industrial relations" against RMG factory disasters. Germany's Senior Experten Services, for example, has collaborated not just on water desalination along the coast, but also environmentally protecting the Sunderbans alongside Shushilan, vocational training with the Khundkar Foundation in Comilla, while helping nursing, autistic children, hospitals, and students (through the German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD). Some of these are also arenas where the Swedish International Development Agency seeks "inclusive and sustainable growth."
Optimism and opportunity bound both sides to ever-ambitious programmes, anchored in Bilateral Development Cooperation plans. The first, in 2007, produced a Country Reduction Paper targeting human development, governance, and economic development, yet elevating more pro-poor and primary education emphases than anticipated. So much so that the second 6-year plan, called the Multi-Annual Indicative programme, raised the previous €403 million budget by almost three-quarters to €690 million, addressing, as one might expect, democratic governance, nutrition security, and education/skills development, all through a bottom-up societal approach than the top-down alternative that invariably gets tangled up in governmental bureaucracies.
That these more or less coincided with the U.N. MDG (Millennium Development Goals) campaign further bonded the two sides. As a pre-MDG leader in many of the MDG categories, coupled with its no-frill, low-profile, and hands-on engagement, many EU members were better placed than many (or any) other external entities to pull Bangladesh up by its bootstraps until it becomes a middle-income country. Additional emphases on this is evident in (a) the 8-point EIDHR (European Instrument on Democracy and Human Rights) programme, due to produce its report at the end of 2015; (b) DEAR (Development Education and Awareness Raising) efforts to consolidate civil society organisations at the grassroots levels; and (c) promoting local-global links through civil society organisations.
Once the U.N. SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) programme picks up momentum, and the Paris environmental conference concludes, we can expect these growing links to expand, exposing different yet equally significant non-economic infrastructures. On the one hand, these initiatives and projects have been helping Bangladesh to better integrate within, and on the other, these can only expand bilateral trade opportunities and openings infinitely with EU countries. In other words, the direct consequences of galvanising principles-based EU-stamped infrastructures also spawn tangible but indirect EU-related transactions, in addition to mobilising the subjects of these initiatives: the masses rather than the government.
For example, with the United Kingdom becoming Bangladesh's largest source of incoming foreign direct investment, the slow but conspicuous elevation of Bangladesh-born British citizens has multiplied social links and channelled more merchandise flows both ways than just human beings. Similar results await Bangladesh on the European continent. Together, West European countries account for a large proportion of historical and RMG exports: muslin to England during the empire; tea and jute to England from the time of Indian partition until recently; Germany as the second-largest RMG importer, Sweden crossing the $5-billion RMG import threshold; and so forth. These have translated into educational exchanges, joint-research among professionals, and fall-backs for future economic contingencies.
Europe's looming demographic crisis, for example, will have to turn to capable, constructive, and culturally consistent immigrants at some point, much as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel's Syrian welcoming-mat has been initiating. The Economist recently documented Europe's dire demographic straits through the growing dependency-ratio of the pre-15 and 65+ age-groups upon the 15-65 working-age population: for France, this presently is 57.6 per cent, Britain 54.2, The Netherlands 52.2, Germany 51.4, Spain 50, Poland 47.7, and Hungary 47, among others, against the conventional standard that this ratio should not exceed 33.3 per cent or so (that the costs of one person in the pre-15 or post-65 age-group require at least 3 working individuals). With the demographic time-bomb ticking, no wonder a Syrian migrant EU plan distributed 43,000 refugees to Germany, 32,000 to France, 15,000 to Spain, 11,000 to Poland, and 9,000 to The Netherlands, among others, immediately, in spite of an exploding anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.
With its moderate Muslim history, lifestyles, and aspirations, Bangladesh's resonance can only widen and deepen should that European need for workers and professionals become more urgent. This is where extended years of collaboration at the grassroots level matters, just as irreversible Bangladeshi reforms and infrastructural investments only narrows the wide extant economic and socio-cultural gaps between both sides. This is not to depict the inevitability of the plight, nor to advocate something as sensitive as migration as the solution; or even to point Bangladesh as the beacon of future West European hope. The central point is simple: just as the Europeans have helped us cross the choppy seas of infrastructural development when we have needed that the most, given our younger population, we will be there to lend a hand if and when European machines grind to a halt for the lack of personnel.
While there is a lot to be gained mutually, treating the European Union exclusively from the rest of the world would be increasingly counter-productive: not only does the European Union resort to global and multilateral yardsticks to prepare its country-specific plans and programmes, but the expanding globalisation tentacles also conflicts with such a country-specific or nationalistic approach. Since keeping synch with the United Nations, for example, keeps us in the mainstream, turning to that entity in the next piece illustrates another diplomatic puzzle: the costs of jumping ships for political purposes is not worth the abstract economic benefits.
The writer is Professor of International Relations, formerly in Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico City.
 [email protected]