A report by the Guardian, on Friday (July 14) said that the European Commission president will return to Tunisia, over the weekend with the prime ministers of Italy and the Netherlands to sign a $1.12 billion (1 billion euro) deal.
What is the deal all about?
The billion euro package was first announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen by the Europe Union for the North African nation.
The British media report citing sources also said that a memorandum of understanding is expected to be signed, on Sunday, with von der Leyen accompanying Italian and Dutch PMs Giorgia Meloni and Mark Rutte to Tunisia.
The so-called “macro-financial assistance” package was announced last month, with $1 billion (900 million euros) directed towards helping Tunisia’s economy.
The rest will be divided into a reform agenda set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a partnership with Tunisia to combat people smuggling, human trafficking and the continuing tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea.
This comes weeks after Tunisian President Kais Saied rejected the package and said that Tunis will not be the EU’s “border guard”.
The country has witnessed a spike in racially motivated attacks after Saied accused illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan African countries of bringing violence and alleging a “criminal plot” to change the country’s demography.
This has led many to leave Tunisia via the dangerous Mediterranean Sea route to reach Europe. Several countries in the EU, particularly Italy, have been looking to reduce the increasing number of migrants fleeing Africa with most of the departures to Rome being from Tunisia.
In the Netherlands, tensions ran high as Rutte, longest serving Dutch PM, quit after failing to secure a package of measures to rein in migration.
Additionally, several members of the EU parliament have voiced opposition and concerns about giving Tunisia 1 billion euros over its breakdown of democracy under President Saied and the 27-nation bloc being complicit as it happens.
Rights groups urge support for migrants
On Friday, Tunisian rights groups sounded alarm over the deteriorating situation in the country’s port of Sfax with hundreds of migrants fleeing or being forced out of Tunisia’s second-largest city.
Sfax is a departure point for migrants making their way to Europe but due to the unrest there, hundreds were forcibly taken to the desert bordering Libya and Algeria. Around 100 and 150 migrants including women and children are stuck on the border with Libya, said Romdane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), on Friday.
Some 165 migrants were abandoned near the border with Algeria and were later picked up without any specifications of by whom or where they were taken, he added. Amor said that migrants need to be provided with emergency accommodation after the bodies of two migrants were found and fear of finding more, in the upcoming days.
Naila Zoghlami, head of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, said Saied’s remarks have given people “green light to do what they liked to migrants,” adding that women from sub-Saharan African countries told her organisation that they had been raped by Tunisians.
(With inputs from agencies)
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