European think-tank slams Egyptian military's crackdown

Egypt is not moving towards democracy under its military rulers, warns think-tank the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in a new policy memo published the week before a bitterly contested constitutional referendum is set to take place.

The memo’s authors Anthony Dworkin and Hélène Michou argue that the military’s harsh repression of dissent “will not succeed”, and that establishing “a stable and democratic political order” will be impossible “while trying to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood as an organisation”. Thus the European Union, the ECFR concludes, “must…build a new policy towards Egypt on this basis”.

The ECFR is an independent, pan-European think-tank, which aims to conduct research and promote informed debate on the development of coherent and effective European values-based foreign policy.