It has been interesting to see that lawyers have played a prominent role in the actions to overthrow dictatorships in the Arab world.

In Tunisia, the overwhelming majority of lawyers went on strike rather early in the protests. The courthouse in Benghazi, Libya was apparently the centre of the local revolution.

In Manama, Bahrain, lawyers are offering constitutional seminars and free advice in Pearl Square.

In Egypt, lawyers in their robes joined the strikes in Tahrir Square.

In any new democratic settlement, the role of lawyers, based on an independent bar, will be key.

When this happened before on the EU’s borders, in the uprising against communism in 1989, the EU was vital in supporting the role of the legal profession and the rule of law.

There were general programmes run by the EU, the TACIS and PHARE programmes among them, which aimed to help the countries in question to move to a democratic, free-market economy.

Through these programmes and others, lawyers were trained – and assisted in other ways – to play their part.

I hope that the EU will leap into action again following the uprisings on our southern borders.

There may be some who think that the eastern border is different to the southern border, because in the south there is a sea, and the people on the other side have a different religion and different culture.

I do not agree. Neighbours are neighbours.

We realise from the thousands who arrived by boat from Tunisia on the island of Lampedusa recently that the sea can be as easy to cross as land.

It is in our interests to have democratic, successful and stable neighbours, regardless of sea or religion and culture.

That is not to say that this is a re-run of 1989 or that the problems and responses will be the same.

But, in essence, it seems to me that the EU should provide similar assistance.

I hope that lessons are learned from the experience in the early ‘90s. The EU was not the only one interested to help out in central and eastern Europe.

The USA appeared on the scene, too, with much money and expertise.

The difference between the EU and USA approaches in relation to lawyers was that the EU gave lots of smaller grants to a variety of organisations to help lawyers and the bars, whereas the USA channelled it all through the American Bar Association, which set up its Central and Eastern European Law Initiative (CEELI).

Just a few years ago this body was the recipient of $20 million per year, nearly all from the US government, to assist lawyers and legal systems in the region.

Fragmentation has its appeal when you have 27 Member States - though there were fewer in those days - each wanting to push its national interest.

It is also more democratic and competitive.

But it is less efficient. CEELI set up offices in all the relevant countries.

Through its central structure, it could call on the expertise of many lawyers and judges in the USA who gave a vast amount of valuable time to the necessary tasks.

In the case of the EU, there was no coordination between the players on the ground in legal services, and there was a certain of amount of reinvention of the wheel with each project.

There will need to be aid again this time for a wide range of activities, but I hope that the assistance for lawyers and legal systems will be more efficiently handled.

It may be true that the USA might not be so conspicuous this time around, because of its own financial crisis, and because the USA is differently perceived in the Arab world to the way it was seen in central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism, but that is no reason not to do things better when a fresh opportunity arises.

There is another difference to the position in the early 1990’s.

The legal profession in the former communist countries did not have its own existing cross-border organisation. (Now nearly all of them are brought together in the CCBE.)

On the other hand, there is a body that currently represents the Arab bars, and through them Arab lawyers, and I assume that the relevant people in the EU will be in touch with it – the Arab Lawyers Union – to find out about their needs, since they know the region and its legal profession best.

We are still at an early stage.

Uprisings which have taken place have not worked themselves through to a democratic solution, and others are being stifled or are only halfway successful.

The end result is not clear.

But I hope that in the bowels of the appropriate office buildings here in Brussels, officials are beginning to think about the future EU response to support lawyers and the legal system, because without that there will not be a successful transition.