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North Africa and the Middle East

My hon. Friend is quite right that democracy is not just the holding of elections. We are all familiar with countries where elections of a kind are held, but we would not call them democracies. Indeed, some of the countries concerned used to hold elections. Democracy does indeed require all those things—an independent judiciary, strong civil institutions, free media, and so on. I have already outlined what we are doing in Tunisia to support their development, and I want to put the argument about what the European Union as a whole can do to encourage them.