The European Union and Tunisia have signed this Sunday a memorandum of understanding in immigration and economic matters. The second time was the charm. A European delegation was already at the Palacio de Cartago on June 11 and this Sunday, they have returned to unblock the negotiation. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the acting Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, returned to Tunisia to finally sign an agreement with the President, Kais Saied.
“It has been agreed that Tunisia will better protect its borders and tackle human trafficking, in exchange for EU investments. This money is intended to improve the Tunisian economy,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Rutte was quoted as saying by Efe. In the press conference from Tunisia, no details were given by the three European officials.
The negotiations had been blocked after at the end of June Saied will refuse to become “gendarme of the borders of Europe”. The pact offered in June to the North African country contemplated an aid package of more than one million euros from the European Union in exchange for cutting off the migratory flow from its shores. The details of the signing this Sunday, at the close of this edition, have not been disclosed.
The Tunisian coasts have become a hotbed of clandestine emigration to the north in recent months, especially to Italy, with more than 70,000 people so far in 2023. In these seven months, the rise is significant if we compare the figures for 2021, with 24,624 arrivals, and 2022, with 31,920. According to figures cited by Corriere della Seraonly in July of this year, landings flowed at a rate of between 600 and 1,000 per day.
Much has to do with this the ‘crusade’ against sub-Saharan immigrants that the populist Saied has undertaken. In February he broke out with a racist speech in which he accused these people of all the ills of the country. African immigrants, he said, “are part of a criminal conspiracy born at the dawn of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia and there are parties that have received large sums of money since 2011 to settle migrants in Tunisia” in order to dilute , according to him, the “Arab-Muslim” character of Tunisia.