The year 2011 will enter history as a year of surprises and profound changes that seemed to upend the order of things as we had known it for decades. South of the Mediterranean, the “Arab spring” burst forth upon an unsuspecting world, with its sudden affirmation of the power of the people and its vision of a new hope and a better future for them. North of the same sea, within the European Union, “the European Fall” set in under the darkening skies of a tottering Euro, a deepening debt crisis, rising unemployment rates and stunted prospects for economic growth. When populations take to the streets, they do so fueled by anger and despair.

Yet in the Arab world, they did so in the firm conviction that it was in their power to change things for the better. Within the EU, the main object of the sporadic protests seemed to be to cling at all costs to things as they had been before. The screams that were heard were in protest at a world that was changing for the worse and threatening to rob people of long-enjoyed privileges.