The European Union offers financial aid to Tunisia to stabilize the country and curb migratory flows.
The European Union hopes to conclude with Tunisia, by the end of June, an agreement comprising financial aid of one billion euros to help the regime stabilize financially. The support is conditional on the conclusion of an agreement between Tunis and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for another loan, for which the Tunisian government refuses, for the time being, the counterparties.
The whole thing aims to stabilize the country, which is going through a serious economic crisis. It must help reduce migratory pressure on Italy, while Tunisians are one of the first nationalities seeking asylum in Europe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited President Kaïs Saïed on Sunday, along with the Prime Ministers of Italy and the Netherlands, Giorgia Meloni and Mark Rutte. She announced “macro-financial assistance (a loan, editor’s note) which could reach 900 million euros”. This aid would be added to a credit of 1.9 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the negotiation of which is slipping notably because Tunis refuses to restructure public companies.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrel, recently worried about a “risk of collapse” of Tunisia, while the country’s public finances are at their worst. The debt reached 80% of GDP, the American rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the country’s rating on Friday to CCC- (very high risk of default).
Pledge of its desire to move quickly, the European Union “could provide additional aid of 150 million euros to be injected now into the budget” of Tunisia, added Ursula von der Leyen.
Stop migration
These amounts would be part of a “package” on which the Commission hopes to conclude an agreement with Tunisia before the European summit on June 29 and 30. It also provides for an increase in aid to Tunisia for the fight against illegal immigration: 105 million euros to be dedicated to the search and rescue of migrants at sea, but also to the return of rejected Tunisian asylum seekers. in Europe.
Tunisia is both a country of migratory transit and a country of exile. Last year, some 18,000 Tunisians arrived in the EU, forming the third nationality of applicants, ahead of Egyptians and Syrians, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.
Avoiding the economic collapse of the country could therefore also have an effect on the number of applications for emigration to Europe. Beyond macro-financial aid, Europe is betting on major infrastructure projects in the country. It thus plans to invest more than 300 million euros in the Elmed electrical interconnection project, which should link Tunisia to Italy and enable the former to sell green electricity to Europeans. A “digital bridge” project is also in preparation – the Medusa submarine cable should connect eleven countries by 2025. The Union is also opening a “window” to Tunisia on the Erasmus program, financing student exchanges.
Authoritarian regime
Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was happy with the plan, as her government worries about a further increase in the arrival of migrants from Tunisia, whose coast is 141 km from Tunisia. the island of Lampedusa. Since the beginning of the year, Italy has seen the arrival of some 26,000 asylum seekers, and nearly a thousand have disappeared in shipwrecks.
But the envelope extended to the Kaïs Saïed regime also provoked reactions of indignation. “After Erdogan, another autocrat to whom we are trying to outsource our migration problems… An EU unable and unwilling to manage its own borders is a shame”, reacted the former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, liberal MEP (Open Vld).
After Tunisians overthrew dictator Ben Ali in 2011, triggering the Arab Spring, Tunisia reverted to authoritarian rule when President Saïed granted himself full power in July 2021.
Since his coup, he has dismantled institutional guarantees for human rights, targeted prominent dissident voices, who have been the subject of arbitrary arrests. Since February 2023, the Tunisian authorities have been conducting a criminal investigation against at least 21 people, opposition activists, lawyers and businessmen, “for unfounded accusations of conspiracy”, denounces Amnesty International.
